Lilla Farkas is a Hungarian human rights attorney. In 1995, as a fresh graduate from Eötvös Lóránd University, Faculty of Law, Lilla started working for the Budapest-based Legal Defence Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKI). She worked on cases of ethnic discrimination, conducted fact-finding missions, wrote and translated human rights reports into English, and co-ordinated a regional research project on criminal compensation involving the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Romania. In 1998 Lilla became a member of the Budapest Bar Association and took up the position of staff attorney at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, where, utilising case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice, she provided legal representation before domestic courts mainly in cases relating to aliens, detention and victims of police misconduct. She also acted as counsel before the European Court of Human Rights, took part in researching discrimination against Roma in the criminal justice system, and reporting on the treatment of aliens and those in detention/prison.
In 2002 she received a LLM with merit from King’s College London. At the end of 2005 Lilla went on to work for the Chance for Children Foundation, an NGO specialising in actio popularis based strategic litigation combating the segregation of Roma children in primary schools. Since the summer of 2005 she has served as president of the Hungarian Equal Treatment Authority’s Advisory Board and as Roma ground coordinator for the European Commission’s Network of Independent Experts in the Non-discrimination Field. She joined MDAC’s board in January 2007.
