“It should be the responsibility of the international community, and primarily the UN, to provide legal and security guarantees to enable Christian communities to return to where they have been living for centuries”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared in New York on Sunday evening local time, where he is attending the session of the UN General Assembly this week.

On Monday, Mr. Szijjártó will also be meeting with Cardinal of New York Timothy C. Dolan, and in a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI said it was important that he is beginning the week of the UN General Assembly with this meeting, because in recent years the persecution of Christians has become an increasingly serious global crisis.

Christianity has become the most persecuted religion in the world today, and four out of every five people who are persecuted because of their faith are Christian. Despite this, the world is turning its back on this problem and “there is no room for honest and clear speech on the fate of persecuted Christians within the current hypocritical global way of thinking”, Mr. Szijjártó stressed.

Hungary is standing up for persecuted Christians, he added, explaining that this is what the Hungary Helps Programme, which the Hungarian Government has launched in the Middle East, is all about. The goal of the Programme is to reinforce Christian communities and to guarantee the return of Christian communities to territories that have been regained from the Islamic State jihadist organisation.

The American Catholic Church is also firmly supporting the issue of persecuted Christians, meaning “our objectives coincide”, the Minister said, referring to his meeting with the Cardinal.

Mr. Szijjártó will be holding a host of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly, and amongst others on Monday will be meeting with the directors of the world’s second largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, and with the management of MSD Pharma, which is performing a major series of clinical tests in Hungary.

With relation to these meetings, the Minister said that the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have been showing a major interest in Hungary recently, and particularly with relation to the expansion of clinical testing, which represent a further development opportunity for the whole sector.

“In addition to the automotive industry, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the frontrunners in research and development in Hungary”, Mr. Szijjártó highlighted. Last year, 245 million dollars was invested in research and development within the sector.

“The sector employed 32 thousand people during the first six months of this year, an increase of 17 percent, which also indicates the dynamic growth of the pharmaceutical industry in Hungary. Production value increased by 11 percent during the first half of 2018. In comparison to the other countries of the Visegrád Group (V4), Hungary has the highest level of pharmaceutical industry investment, totalling 3.5 billion dollars, and Hungary is also in first place with relation to productivity”, Mr. Szijjártó highlighted.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)