Call to action: Bring Children together for Diversity

November 13, 2017

As segregation of Roma in education is worsening, equality and human rights organizations call for redoubled efforts at inclusive education.

13 November 2017 – Brussels, Strasbourg, Vienna, Warsaw – On the 10th anniversary of the landmark judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on the segregation of Roma children in education, equality and human rights organizations call for a redoubling of efforts to bring children together in the spirit of Europe’s commitment to dignity, equality and human rights.

The D.H. case was a complaint by 18 Romani children placed in substandard, special schools for children with mental or intellectual impairments. On 13 November 2007, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the children had suffered discrimination in education, banned under international and European law.

The action of these 18 children triggered Europe-wide efforts to end separate, substandard schooling for Roma. Despite these efforts, desegregation has not yet succeeded. On the contrary, although the participation of Roma in education is steadily increasing Europe-wide, school segregation is manifestly worsening as indicated in the most recent Communication by the European Commission on the Midterm review of the EU framework for national Roma integration strategies.

Children placed in segregated education are victims of discrimination. When educated separately, they are ill-equipped to handle the complexities of our diverse societies. Segregated education denies Roma and other minorities, children with disabilities and migrant children, as well as children from majority communities, the benefits of inclusive education and the positive value of diversity for vibrant democracies and, above all, for people. Coupled with this, the substandard education these children receive severely limits their chances in all walks of life and harms their quality of life.

The European Court’s D.H. judgment came too late for the children who brought the complaint. By the time justice was rendered, they were in their twenties. Together with hundreds of thousands of other Roma around Europe, they had been under-educated and condemned to a life of low-wage employment and exclusion.

In addition to the legal obligations of States to implement European equality law and the international human rights treaties to which they are parties, the “no one left behind” spirit of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda provides a compelling impetus for a renewed commitment to bring children together for inclusive education. In order to track progress, States should also redouble their efforts to develop their knowledge base as well as to produce and make public data in this area, with due consideration to privacy and data protection.

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Bring children together for Diversity
ENG, CZ, SK, HU, DE, HR

The Czech version of the call to action was translated by the Office of the Public Defender of Rights, Czech Republic.
The Slovak version of the call to action was translated by the Slovak National Centre for Human Rights.
The Hungarian version of the call to action was translated by the Equal Treatment Authority, Hungary.
The German version of the call to action was translated by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
The Croatian version of the call to action was translated by the Office of the Ombudswoman, Croatia

Note to Editors

In the D.H. and Others v. Czech Republic case, the eighteen Romani child activists of the complaint showed that more than half of the children in special schools for the mildly mentally disabled in Ostrava in the Czech Republic were Romani, as well as that more than half of the Romani child population was in such “special schools”. They also demonstrated that in Ostrava any Romani child was 27 times more likely to be in separate educational arrangement than a non-Romani child. On the other hand, in the same city of Ostrava, at least 16,722 children of 33,372 children attending schools in Ostrava as of February 1999 went to school every day without meeting any Romani children. The European Court also relied on evidence from the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) showing that the number of Roma children in special schools in the Czech Republic was disproportionately high. The complaint was first brought before domestic courts in 1999, and ruled on finally by a Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights on 13 November 2007.

The European Court of Human Rights has since ruled on cases concerning educational segregation in a number of other European countries. It has also ruled that pre-textual separate arrangements for Romani children based on language are also illegal, as is refusal to enroll or other forms of tolerated non-schooling. National courts have found other forms of separate educational arrangements for Roma also illegal. The European Commission has also taken legal action against European Union Member States for segregation of Roma in education. The European Handbook on Equality Data published by the European Commission recommends Member States to monitor the state of equality and non-discrimination by building national knowledge bases on equality and discrimination by collecting data.

Links

Equinet work on Roma and Travellers

An Equinet survey of its members in 2009 found that across the European Union, a high level of unequal treatment and exclusion of Roma and Traveller people exists. Roma and Travellers are deeply marginalised from social and economic life, which in many Member States is increased through stereotyping in the media and a negative culture within the police force. Particularly problematic areas in terms of discrimination are housing, accommodation, education and social services in the public sector and access to insurance, shops and a wide range of recreational and leisure services in the private sector.

At the same time the majority of equality bodies have found that underreporting of discrimination is widespread, with reasons for this phenomenon including low levels of awareness of rights within the Roma and Traveller communities, time limits on the presentation of cases and issues of trust between the communities and the authorities.

Following the survey, an ad hoc initiative on Roma and Travellers was established with the aim of providing support to specialised equality bodies maximizing the impact of their work on the situation of Roma people. The initiative involved the exchange of information and networking between specialised equality bodies working on Roma issues, identifying the nature and extent of this work. A further output was the publication “Making equality legislation work for Roma and Travellers”.

The work of equality bodies on discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity

**Fighting Discrimination on the Ground of Race and Ethnic Origin (2016)**

In 2016, the Working Group on Equality Law developed a discussion Paper entitled Fighting discrimination on the ground of Race and Ethnic Origin. It discusses the key legal issues and challenges, available tools and good practices in fighting discrimination on the ground of race and ethnic origin, including a focus on work done to combat discrimination against Roma people. 17 out of 19 equality bodies indicated that Roma tend to find themselves in particularly vulnerable situations compared to other racial and ethnic minorities.

This paper fed into a capacity-building seminar for staff members of equality bodies on discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity, organised together with the Hungarian Commissioner for Fundamental Rights in November 2016. Among other topics the seminar had sessions focusing specifically on legal work and on work done to combat discrimination against Roma people.

Thematic Platform for Cooperation: Operational Platform on Roma Equality (OPRE)

Equinet is a member of the OPRE platform, which is the result of the joint conference of the Council of Europe, the European Network of Equality Bodies (Equinet), the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which took place in October 2013 in Vienna. The conference set the scene for closer cooperation among national bodies and between national and international bodies. It was agreed to establish such platforms for collaboration on pressing topics such as asylum and migration, Roma integration, combating hate crime, and advancing social and economic rights and socio-economic equality.

For more information, please contact

Equinet Secretariat: Mr Tamás Kádár, +32 (0) 2 212 3183, tamas.kadar@equineteurope.org