About the Human Rights Fund 2024

The Human Rights Fund (HRF) is a tool of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to support activities of civil society around the world with the goal of achieving tangible results in improving human rights.

The HRF is meant to support activities in line with the five priorities of the Dutch human rights policy:

• Supporting human rights defenders;
• Freedom of expression, internet freedom and independent journalism;
• Equal rights for LGBTIQ+’s;
• Equal rights for women and girls;
• Freedom of religion and belief.

Funding criteria

Project proposals need to meet the following criteria in order to be considered:

• The applying organisation must be based in Hungary.
• If your organisation has been financially supported by the Embassy in previous years, projects should be finished in a satisfactory manner before the starting date of a new project.
• The project must start in 2024. The proposed projects should finish within three years after the starting date.
• The requested contribution should fall within the range of 5.000-25.000 euro per project.
• Proposals must be submitted through a filled in standard application form, which you will find at the bottom of this page.
• The proposal should include clear and feasible goals and durable expected results.
• Project proposals must be concise and focus on the intended activities and results. Filled in formats longer than 4 pages in total (incl. attachments) will not be taken into consideration.
• Please do not send any attachments, such as letters of recommendation or other background documents, supporting your application as they will not be taken into consideration. Only short addendums elaborating on the requested information in the standard application form will be accepted when relevant.
• Focus of the project should be on at least one of the priority areas of the Dutch human rights policy mentioned above.

Application procedure 

• The deadline for submitting project proposals is 18 February 2024.
• Project proposals must be submitted to the Embassy of the Netherlands in Budapest, via e-mail to bdp-hrf@minbuza.nl . Only proposals sent to this email address will be taken into consideration.
• Subject of the e-mail should be “Application Human Rights Fund 2024”.

Assessment and Approval Procedure

Due to the limited amount of funding available, meeting all formal criteria does not automatically mean selection of the proposal. Project proposals received will be subjected to a competitive selection procedure. In assessing the proposals the Embassy will inter alia take the following factors into account:

• Relevance of the project to the human rights objectives of the Netherlands and to the Hungarian context.
• The expected sustainable and tangible impact;
• Balance between the scope of the project activities and proposed budget;
• Past performance;
• Joint applications with other Hungarian organisations are welcomed – informal groups can be involved with legally registered organisation’s applications.
• We will look with special interest to longer-term (multi-annual) projects and projects executed outside of the capital.
• Proposals that aim at capacity building /contain capacity building components or contain cultural/creative components are also welcomed.

The Embassy will assess all received proposals and inform applicants accordingly no later than 26 March 2024. A personal (or telephone) meeting could be part of the selection procedure. After the final decision, organisations whose proposals will have been approved will receive a grant decision. At that time they will be informed about the reporting requirements.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact the Embassy through bdp-hrf@minbuza.nl .

Link to the application form