Hijacking of human rights in slovakia – What to do about it? From research to advocacy

The project responds to unfavourable societal trend, leading to the weakening of the existing system of human rights, to questioning the importance of human rights for the life of society and the individual persons.

In recent years, Slovak society is experiencing a deep crisis that affects all areas of its life. It includes the country's insufficient defense against hybrid threats; the deviation of government policy from the pro-Western course, orientation towards alliances with authoritarian regimes; unconstructive criticism and the subversion of EU unity.

The public is exposed to the intense influence of social networks, undermining trust in institutions and ordinary interpersonal trust, questioning the knowledge of scientists, spreading disinformation and hoaxes. We are witnessing how such concepts are introduced into public awareness that question the importance of human rights, key ideas of human dignity, equality, and non-discrimination.

Theories about male superiority are revived; instead of empathy, the cult of male physical strength is emphasized; violence against women is trivialized, the presence of women in the public sphere is ridiculed or considered harmful. The idea of inclusion and integration of people with physical or mental disabilities is questioned. The Roma are not given a chance to integrate into society.

Many of these concepts, incompatible with the values of the liberal-democratic order, are promoted under the guise of defending a natural right, often even with reference to human rights. Concepts such as human rights, equality or non-discrimination are emptied, often filled with contradictory content.

Metaphorically expressed, we face the danger of human rights being hijacked. At the same time, maintaining the system of liberal democracy cannot be without citizens adopting the concept of human rights, without their willingness to defend them and actively speaking out against individuals or institutions that violate them.

The aim of the project is, based on research, to find out how the public interprets human rights, how it perceives the struggle to preserve the human rights system, to whom it attributes the role of their guardians or destroyers, how it perceives the struggle over the essence of the application of human rights in Slovakia after the 2023 parliamentary elections. The intention is also to develop recommendations on what human rights NGOs and civic initiatives should do in this situation.

The project will use three sources of information as part of the research.

1. The first will be the analytical summary of an interactive discussion (focus group) with the prominent representatives of NGOs dealing with the country’s human rights issues.
2. The second will be a secondary analysis of quantitative data from domestic and international representative public opinion surveys.
3. The third source will be qualitative research in the form of 4 moderated focus groups with respondents representing selected segments of the public. The group discussions, according to a pre-prepared scenario, will reveal how and on what basis they interpret human rights; who in their eyes are the guardians, who promote and respect human rights and who, on the contrary, are their destroyers, to what extent they consider Slovakia to be a society based on respect for human rights.

Audio-recordings will be made of the group debates, which we will be analyzed and processed into a separate chapter of the analytical study.

The manual for practical assistance for local actors in human rights agenda will be elaborated by experts that will be available online.

The study should serve as a basis for a series of 4 discussions with representatives of human rights organizations, which we plan to hold in 4 locations, each for actors from two neighboring regions.

Research findings, analytical conclusions and recommendations will be made available to the wider public also through media platforms and social networks.

The results and outputs of the project will be the utilization of the implemented project activities. They will serve as a supportive tool in the activities of specific social actors, as well as an information and analytical source for the wider public, especially for those citizens who are interested in the issue of human rights and who care about Slovakia being a democratic free country with a firmly established and unquestioned system of implementing human rights.

The qualitative result should be an improvement in knowledge of the issue of human rights in the Slovak Republic and their perception by various segments of the population in the environment of civil society actors – human rights organizations, civic initiatives and individual activists, improving the effectiveness of their work in the practical promotion of human rights, their ability to communicate with citizens about this issue. The expected output should be achieved as a result of the implementation of interactive discussions at workshops with representatives of civil society from all eight regions of Slovakia.

The long-term usable output of the project will be an analytical study, which will be distributed in printed version during the workshops to representatives of human rights NGOs while the electronic version will be posted on the IVO website accessible to all those who will express the interest to get it. The study will summarize the analytical content of the discussions within the next output of the project – the focus groups.

Media outputs will convey the results of project activities in an attractive form for the wider public.