Following the fall of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government, Hungary appears to be distancing itself from part of its anti-abortion, pronatalist, and anti-rights legacy. Since June, Budapest has no longer served as the Secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), an anti-abortion agreement promoted by the first Trump administration. The United States has taken over the role. No public announcement has been made, although the change is reflected on the GCD website.
The declaration is a nonbinding international agreement launched in 2020. It states that there is no international right to abortion and no “obligation on the part of States to finance or facilitate” it. The anti-woman initiative also promotes a restrictive definition of the family, describing it as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and mentioning “equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women.” This language implicitly excludes LGBTQ+ and diverse family models, particularly single-parent and same-sex families.
In practice, the agreement represents an attack on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), women’s access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
The GCD was first pushed by then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It was originally crafted during Trump’s first term by Valerie Huber, who served as the U.S. Special Representative for Global Women’s Health. After Biden took office, the U.S. withdrew its co-sponsorship of and signature from the declaration. In 2021, the new administration said it would instead engage “multilaterally to protect and promote the human rights of all women and girls.”
After leaving government, Huber founded the Institute for Women’s Health (IWH), which operates as a vehicle to preserve and expand the GCD’s international reach. In Uganda, Burundi, and Guatemala, her organization partnered with the governments of those countries to implement the Protego program, which advances the declaration’s agenda through education and public health initiatives.
The GCD website states that the United States is the “new Secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration effective June 2026.” (Source: GCD website).
After Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election, the U.S. rejoined the declaration in January 2025. Today, the GCD has 41 signatories, most of them from Africa, including Egypt, Uganda, and Sudan. It also unites several Asian and Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, and three Latin American states: Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay. More than half of the original signatories to the declaration are authoritarian regimes, including Bahrain, Belarus, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Hungary Remains Listed as a GCD Signatory
In November 2022, Hungary assumed the Secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, taking over from Brazil. Although the exact timeline remains unclear, what was described at the time as a “transitioning” of leadership appears to have coincided with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the presidential election in October 2022. In January 2023, within days of taking office, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government announced Brazil’s withdrawal from the declaration.
The Maria Kopp Institute, founded by the Fidesz government, was the organization responsible for carrying out the Secretariat’s work. For now, the GCD website provides no further information about the future of the transition. “More details coming soon” is all it says. Hungary, meanwhile, remains listed as one of the declaration’s signatories.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrates the United States’ return to the Geneva Consensus Declaration in a 2025 post on X. (Source: X).
Following Orbán’s defeat in the April national election, Hungary’s new government, led by Péter Magyar, announced plans to dismantle the network funded by the autocratic former leader to promote “family values,” anti-abortion politics, and an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda both at home and abroad.
After his electoral win, Magyar criticized the public funding of Fidesz-aligned institutions, saying the state “should never have financed them in the first place.” During Orbán’s tenure, Hungarian public funding had long sustained a network of organizations promoting his government’s anti-rights agenda, including CPAC Hungary, the Danube Institute, the Center for Fundamental Rights, and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC).
In one of his first public statements, Magyar said the state would no longer finance CPAC Hungary. “Mixing party financing with government spending from the state budget is, in my view, a criminal offense, and this will have to be investigated by the future authorities, including the National Office for the Recovery and Protection of Public Assets, since those budgetary funds were not meant to finance party events,” he argued.
One of the latest moves by Magyar’s government to begin untangling Orbán’s institutional network has been to order the dissolution of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium Foundation, which is expected to take effect on July 31. In Brussels, MCC’s Belgian branch is also facing pressure after being suspended in June from the European Union’s database of lobbyists and campaign groups following a complaint alleging that it had failed to disclose its budget and funding sources. The decision could limit its access to meetings within EU institutions.
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar celebrates the end of propaganda broadcasts by Hungary’s public media in a post on X. (Source: X).
The new administration is also reforming Hungary’s public media after more than a decade in which it served as a propaganda tool for Fidesz. Magyar had promised this change during the election campaign.
The reform began on July 7 with an apology to the Hungarian public. The country’s main public television channel showed a black screen with the following message: “Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long. Public media will now be reformed so they will be independent and trustworthy. Our news service is currently suspended. Stay tuned!” While the changes are being implemented, Hungary’s main public television channel has stopped broadcasting news, and a state-run radio station has been suspended.
GPAHE Report – Project 2025 Goes Global
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Geneva Consensus Declaration: Institutionalizing Attacks on Women and LGBTQ+ Rights
Trump’s Political Playbook Follows Hungary’s Authoritarian Path Project 2025’s Goal All Along
Weaponizing ‘Free Speech’ Against LGBTQ+ Rights at the European Parliament
Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orbán is setting his sights on Latin America
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