Hungarian Conservative

In the latest episodes of the Reflections from Budapest podcast, Director of the Middle East Action Team at the Religious Freedom Institute Jeremy P. Barker explained that their work aims to promote religious freedom rights for everyone everywhere, recognising and hoping that includes even the smallest and most persecuted religious minorities, whether that’s Christians or Yazidis in the Middle East, or Uyghurs in China and others.

Hungary has recently been making its presence known in the world of international aid, with its most recent efforts being in earthquake-ravaged Turkey. The small nation has focused its initiatives on providing aid to oppressed Christians, which now face record-level highs of global persecution today. Global aid has poured in to relieve the suffering of the region’s minorities following the end of the war against ISIS, during which the region’s Christians, along with other minority communities such as the Yezidis, suffered barbaric crimes.

The Hungary Helps Programme, however, does not only help persecuted Christians, but provides effective support in crisis areas and areas that are hit by man-made or natural disasters as well. Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Hungary has provided 130 billion forints (335.6 million euros) in aid to the victims of the war in Ukraine. Hungary also sent ten tons of relief supplies to Turkey immediately after the deadly earthquakes on 6 February and 50 million forints (132,000 euros) to Syria.

According to Juliana Taimoorazy, the future of Assyrian Iraqi Christians is worrisome. She underscored that the situation could improve only if their religious leaders would start educating Muslim communities and if a steadfast partnership with different Islamic organisations would come to life.