PHOTOS: Hungary built an entire youth centre in an African country

A youth counseling centre built in part from funds contributed by the Hungarian government has been inaugurated in Ethiopia, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

Hungary contributed 160 million forints (EUR 429,000) to the construction of the centre that will enable young people in Ethiopia to stay in and return to their homeland, Szijjártó told the inauguration ceremony, according to a ministry statement. The minister underscored the importance of supporting local communities so that they can remain in or return to “their homeland of hundreds of years or more”. “Our basic principle is that help should be taken where it is needed rather than bringing problems where there aren’t any yet,” Szijjártó said.

Europe has been facing strong migration pressure in the recent period, which poses serious security challenges to migrants’ countries of origin, transit countries and their destination countries, he said. Migration should be prevented rather than encouraged, he said, and called for creating the circumstances that will enable people to remain in their homeland. This is what Hungary is doing in some fifty countries worldwide, most of them in Africa, Szijjártó said, adding that Hungary was prepared to keep financing such projects in the future, too. As a country with one thousand years of Christian statehood, Hungary feels responsibility for all Christians, Szijjártó said, adding that Christianity was the most persecuted religion in the world today.