David Beňák
Deputy Minister for Human Rights, Equal Opportunities and Legislation
“When I get on the bus and I am not wearing a suite, people start watching their belongings carefully,” says David Beňák, Deputy Minister of Human Rights. I face prejudice every day. But thank God I have never faced prejudice in civil service since I started working there 16 years ago. Just at the beginning I felt very strongly that the people around me didn’t have high expectations of me and I had to work twice as much to earn my position. This annoyed me but I realized there was no other choice than to play this game.”
David was born into a Romani family in the city of Teplice in northern Bohemia in 1979. The family then moved to the neighbouring town of Bílina where he grew up. He attended technical high school in Most where he specialised in engineering and subsequently graduated from the College of Law and Social Work in Most and from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague.
From 2005 till 2015 he worked for Prague 14’s Municipal Department as the head of its Social and Health Services department. In 2015 he was appointed as the assistant to Deputy Human Rights Minister Martina Štěpánková, and previously he worked as the vice-chair of the Czech Government Council on Roma Community Affairs.
From the very beginning David was active in the field of human rights; he has advocated people in need and provided them with consultations and help. His main target was naturally Roma people. „I like working with people and my motto is that everybody deserves dignity and to be respected.”
Since the beginning of April 2017, David was appointed the new political deputy to Czech Human Rights, Equal Opportunities and Legislation Minister Jan Chvojka (Czech Social Democratic Party). “The law on social enterprises will be a crucial priority for me. Supporting the social economy makes sense as a component of addressing social problems. As long as people don’t enjoy fair conditions for accessing housing and jobs, we will be just talking about solving these problems forever without actually doing anything. The Government should negotiate the outline of legislative intent for this law during this month,” said David Beňák, who has years of experience working in the social field at local and national level.
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