The Habeas Corpus Working Group

"Habeas corpus" is one of the oldest human rights instruments. The name comes from the Habeas Corpus Act (England 1679), it provided legal protection against unlawful detention, the title refers to the right of self-determination opposed to arbitrary acts. We chose this name to express the importance of all of our rights to self-determination concerning the body.

The Habeas Corpus Legal Aid
Our free legal aid has been operating since 1997. We provide legal advice and general information services to people turning to our organization. The Legal Aid provides free legal assistance and in certain cases legal representation in court to its clients, as well as advocacy work on both general and specific level. Our main constituencies are:

• battered and sexually abused women, victims of sexual assault in the workplace,
• child victims of sexual and physical abuse,
• victims of violence and/or other forms of discrimination against women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, HIV positive persons, transsexuals,
• persons requesting legal assistance concerning their civil rights as members of any sexual minority,
• gay and bisexual young men seeking advice concerning their compulsory military service.

At present we are focusing primarily on the equality of women and sexual minorities and rights connected to sexual autonomy. We reject all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation and the representation and use of women and children as objects. We support the equality of minority groups within the community of sexual minorities and advocate the demolition of the institutions of heterosexism and patriarchy. We also champion the equal rights of women to the same fearless sexuality men enjoy.

We regularly criticize the chapter of the Hungarian Penal Code regulating sexual crimes, since it is very conservative and is discriminatory against women, girls and homosexuals. We prepared an alternative bill supporting the rights to sexual autonomy that would give higher level and more effective legal protection against arbitrary and violent acts. We began to focus on infringements within the legal procedures on behalf of the police, the state attorney's office, other state authorities and courts, that, according to our work-experience, decrease the effects of the already poor legal protection of women and children and sexual minorities against violations of their human rights. We organized debates about the freedom of private life and gender equality. We publish many relevant documents on our website.

We have written proposals for the Constitutional Court and make statements about a number of issues concerning human rights; we write articles and distribute legal information to our clients, to politicians, and the general public through leaflets, letters, and press statements.

The ratio of women among our homo- and bisexual clients is significantly low. In our opinion, this is not a sign of the greater legal security of homosexual women, but of the greater isolation of lesbians and bisexual women compared to men. We find it important to work toward a change in this tendency as well.