Human Rights Report 2025
December 10, International Human Rights Day, is not a holiday of guarantees. It is also a reminder of a struggle: a fight for human rights and dignity for all without distinction. Year after year, we commemorate this day in Slovakia without being able to say with certainty that we have moved forward in this most important struggle. What we can celebrate, however, is the fact that the struggle has not stopped.
12 organizations that have been part of this struggle for many years created the Human Rights Coalition this year. The cooperation of these organizations also produced the Human Rights Report for 2025. It reports on a wide range of human rights problems that we have recorded in Slovakia.
Human rights were the target of attacks in 2025. Parliamentary votes, government statements, legislative changes are gradually pushing the boundaries of what is considered possible in Slovakia. What was once unthinkable is now becoming the norm.
The state, which is supposed to protect people from injustice, has itself become a source of injustice.
Its representatives have spent the whole year trying to convince us that human rights do not matter. They have tried to discourage us from defending human rights in various ways, whether by protesting, organizing or demanding the right to information. They have sent clear messages to those who are most vulnerable: Roma women, queer people, journalists, children, young people and others. For some of us, rights are still just a theory that has little to do with real life. When fear is the tool of power, courage is the answer of the society.
But 2025 is also proof that although politicians have tried their best to discourage us, they have not succeeded. They have failed thanks to the daily, visible and invisible, work in human rights for all.
This report can be read as an open indictment of those who see equality as a threat. It is a rejection of the normalization of hatred and discrimination that they pass off as „values“. It is a denial of the cynical notion that human rights are a footnote that can be ignored when political or power interests are at stake. Human rights are not tokens in a political game, they represent a boundary that power must not cross.
This report is a description of the state Slovakia is in today, but it is also a plan for the future, for Slovakia for all. We do not just monitor laws, numbers and paragraphs. We monitor their consequences on people’s lives: children who do not get equal opportunities at school; families whose existence is questioned by the state; communities that are denied safe housing;
journalism that is attacked every day; people whose voices are silenced before anyone can even hear them; women whose bodies have become the subject of political battles.
Human rights are not statistics either. They are life or its loss. This report does not ask for attention, it asks for change.
The report is based on monitoring public policies and presence in communities. From the perspective of those who see what the state does not want to see. And they act where the state does not act. It is the result of the expertise, practice and responsibility of the organizations of the Human Rights Coalition towards people whose rights are violated.
Our goal is not just to name the problems. Our goal is to change the reality of those affected by these problems. That is why in this report we also bring clear recommendations to the government, the parliament, state institutions and the public. We expect them to be heard. Because if the state fails to protect rights, it is the duty of civil society to remind this responsibility and to promote its fulfillment. Inequality is not an accident. It is the result of decisions. And decisions can be changed.
This document is therefore also a commitment. A commitment that where power tries to push rights to the margins, we will bring them back to the center of attention. That wherever discrimination is presented as the „norm“, we will emphasize equality. And where people feel alone and without voice, we will stand by them. If someone does not have the same rights as others, then the rights are not equal for anyone.
Solidarity is not a gesture – it is power. We are not afraid to name injustice out loud – and we will not be afraid of solutions that require courage. Human rights are not some decoration of democracy. They are its foundation.
