It was already public knowledge that this category of claimants was subjected to poor treatment by the Hungarian authorities, but recent events suggest that the authorities have reached a new low. Building on extremely hostile policies towards refugees that have been admonished by both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Hungarian authorities now intend to resort to highly dubious means to assess the applications of individuals claiming asylum on grounds related to their sexual orientation. The most recent reason for alarm again relates to migration and refugees, an area of widespread criticism of Hungarian authorities. From legislation targeting ‘foreign-operating universities’ to border walls to keep refugees from entering Hungarian territory, the populist right-wing government of Viktor Orban has been sparking outrage in many sectors of Hungarian society, and the European institutions. Read 2 hours ago | Max Z.Hungary has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons for quite a while.
And the diplomatic corps is already full of people who passed the test and have impressive résumés. Perhaps, but the exam and the cutoff score inject an element of merit and transparency into a byzantine hiring process that involves more-subjective elements, including an oral assessment and personal essays. Female representation has increased to 42%, but the diplomatic corps is still 6% black and 7% Hispanic.Ī spokesman says the State Department is moving toward a “more holistic” hiring approach that will “result in a more qualified pool of applicants.” But given that applications already vastly outnumber available jobs, why the imperative to consider candidates who flunk the exam? The spokesman said the department believes education and work experience are better predictors of job performance than the exam. Then director general of the Foreign Service, called for it to be scrapped for its negative effect on minority hiring. The State Department made changes to the test in 1989, in response to decades of litigation by female applicants, and in 2006 after The test expires after 18 months I passed several times before I was offered a job in 2001. In a typical year, 10,000 to 20,000 people take the exam and 2% to 3% of those are hired. When I started taking it in the 1990s, it took three hours and consisted of a job knowledge section along with the kind of general questions contestants answer on “Jeopardy!,” an English grammar and usage section, and an essay, which wasn’t graded unless you met the cut-off score. Recalled that in 1953 the test took 3½ days and covered everything from astronomy to zoology. The exam has long been regarded as difficult.