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During an interview with the ERRC’s Sinan Gokcen, Mr Erno Kallai, Hungary’s newly-elected Parliamentary Commissioner for National and Ethnic Minorities Rights (Minorities Ombudsman) emphasised the need to expand the Ombudsman’s mandate to cover discrimination in the private sphere.
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The situation of Romani communities in Europe is complex and does not allow the approach of ‘one size fits all’. Discrimination against Roma as individuals or as a community in access to education or in child protection systems are phenomena that the human rights community regularly observes. However, it would be foolhardy if activists, researchers or responsible governments would claim to fully know and understand the scope and quantity of theses phenomena targeting Roma. Over the past years, many studies have been conducted that investigated the reasons for and the background of exclusion; however, stakeholders concerned about this matter have not succeeded in achieving far-reaching tangible change. This is more than regrettable. Tensions between majority populations and Romani communities around issues of marginalisation, discrimination and assimilation do not contribute to a social cohesion which is required for countries to attain stability and progress.
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The European Court of Human Rights Acknowledges Systemic Discrimination in the Case of Education of Romani Children from the Czech Republic
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Born and raised in Kalamata, a small city to the south-west of Athens, Greece, I could never imagine that one day I would somewhat presumptuously undertake to jot down a short autobiographical note (nor for that matter that anyone would be interested in reading it). As it often happens, my involvement in the field of Roma rights was the result of a series of (fortunate) accidents. Following my failure in the Greek University Admission Examinations, I migrated to the United Kingdom to study at the University of Essex. My efforts during the first two years were devoted solely on passing my exams, and it would be only in the third and final year of my LLB that I would first get a glimpse of the human rights world and decide that this is what I would like to explore further.
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During the not very distant totalitarian past in Czech Republic, it was quite common for people in wheel chairs to be cleared from the streets of Prague before the great Communist Party meeting. The legacy of the past, to consider any departure from the working class image as an anomaly, has led to the continuation of widespread discrimination, even in the new democratic Czech state, of individuals who are visually different – owing to race, social status, physical challenges or mental disabilities. It can be said that public attitudes, over the years, are changing for the better for some groups, but the position of marginalised Roma certainly remains almost untouched. When these perceptions play into institutions like child protection departments, courts, children’s homes, the police, schools etc. Roma are forced to live in a limbo and continue to be the favourite object of state care. This article will present the experience of our nongovernmental organisation, Life Together, in the field of child protection and support for families endangered with forced removal of children to institutional care in the Czech Republic.
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History shows that members of minority groups have been targeted by government practices, both official and unofficial, which appear to aim at the destruction of family units and minority culture. Being Canadian, the Canadian government’s history with regard to its treatment of members of Native Canadian groups typifies this notion for me. After having worked in Europe for 7 years on Roma rights issues, I see many parallels which can be drawn between the experiences of Native Canadians and Roma in Europe. With specific regard to the policies targeting and the treatment of Native Canadian children, striking similarities can be seen between the Canadian and the European experience. This article offers an exploration of Canada’s residential schools for Native Canadian children, its parallels with regard to child protection practices targeting Roma in Europe, and seeks to build the case for compensation for Romani families forcibly separated as a result of child protection systems which can be seen to directly and indirectly discriminate against Roma.
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The ERRC implemented a project between November 2006 and February 2008 to address the problems of systemic disadvantage in Bulgaria. These disadvantages include the evils of racial segregation in the education of Romani children and the absence of action by the central and local governments to implement a comprehensive educational integration policy. The project, “Educational Integration of Roma: Political and Legal Preparation”, was supported by the Roma Education Fund and implemented with the administrative support of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. The project focused on the problems of Romani children in Bulgaria who suffer from racial segregation in education and, therefore, do not have equal access to quality education or, in some cases, do not have access to education at all. As they grow up, Romani children in Bulgaria therefore do not have equal opportunities to work and face barriers to active citizenship. Thus, without an education, they become dependent on the state and its social security system, and are an at-risk group – vulnerable to different types of social exclusion.
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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter “CRC”), ratified in 1991 and incorporated in Hungarian legislation two years later, along with the Child Protection Act (Act No. XXXI on the Protection of Children and the Administration of Public Guardianship) that came into force in 1997, represent a real breakthrough with respect to the perception and practice related to the roles, tasks and scope of child protection in Hungary. The switch of perspectives, consisting of bringing the child and the family to the forefront of child welfare and protection and emphasising the importance of preventive, local care and social work, was not only reflected in legislation: Ensuing practical changes also suggested that, thanks to the new regulation and structure, the Hungarian child welfare and protection system was hopefully undergoing a substantive transformation process. The number of children taken away from their families decreased,3 children’s homes, previously accommodating a great number of children, were closed or converted into smaller group homes, and therefore – due to the establishment of more intimate types of homes that better meet the developmental and psychological needs of children, and the increasing number of children placed in foster families – it became possible for institutionalised children to receive more family-type forms of care.
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In 1999, Roma were recognised as one of five historical minorities in Sweden and Romani Chib was recognised as a minority language. As a consequence, a Council for Romani Issues was formed in 2002 as an advisory council for the government. The recognition of Roma as a national Swedish minority means that Roma have increased opportunities to influence how questions concerning Romani life are handled at the national level directly. Nevertheless, the overall picture of the living conditions of Roma is still alarming. Roma in Sweden live in a very exposed situation in all relevant economic, cultural, and social aspects – not least in terms of access to schooling, the labour market and housing. In 2003, the Swedish Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination published a report entitled “Discrimination against Romanies in Sweden” and will in early 2008 present a report updating the situation of Roma.
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Two thousand and seven could well be described as the year of vindication for the ERRC. During the past year, the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) issued a number of very important judgments on applications brought forward by the ERRC exclusively or together with other NGOs. Among them, the Grand Chamber’s judgment (overturning the Chamber’s judgment) in the application D.H. and others v. The Czech Republic can only be considered one of the most far-reaching judgments ever handed down by the Court, on a number of issues ranging from segregated education to the notion of “informed consent” as well as the role of NGO/INGO reports in proceedings before the Court.2 The latter point is one dear to the ERRC as ever since its inception it focused on both strategic litigation and research/report publication, with one strand of its activities feeding into the other. Although initially confronted with a negative approach by the Court (which persistently rejected references to NGO/INGO and United States’ State Department country reports in the context of applications brought forward by the ERRC), the ERRC persisted and the Court nowadays has radically changed its stance on this issue, even going so far as to what undoubtedly amounts to (truly well-deserved) praise to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch by assigning probative value on their reports regarding Tunisia.3 The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most important judgments issued by the Court in 2007 in two fields of great importance to Roma, namely police abuse and housing.
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The social fabric Sulukule’s population is around 5,000 people, 3,500 of whom are Romani. One of the most important qualities of this district is that the whole population is in one way or another related to each other, causing the neighbourhood to give the impression of a huge extended family. According to the research conducted by the Sulukule Platform, 76% of the district’s residents were born in Sulukule. Street vending by the district’s own residents enables the neighborhood to exist in a self-sufficient manner. In addition to the textile, fruits, vegetable, fish, pickle, toy, and balloon selling street vendors, the neighbourhood markets, food shops, small restaurants and tailors cater exclusively to their local clientele. In other words, the residents of Sulukule are able to survive without stepping out of their neighbourhood. According to the aformentioned research, 66.3% of the residents are content to live in Sulukule.
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One of the key targets of the project entitled “Promoting Roma Rights in Turkey” carried out by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), the Helsinki Yurttaşlar Derneği (Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly- hCa) and the Association for Research Development & Solidarity on Roma Culture – Edirne (EDROM) was to enhance the capabilities of Romani organisations in Turkey. In relation to this aim, the second target was propelling civil society organisations working in the field of human rights to become more interested in the issues faced by Romani society in Turkey.
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The article concerns social aspects of gathering and processing data recorded online. Changes in the forms of control enabled by the development of microelectronics and information and telecommunication technologies are the context of the analysis. The specific issues of the social space of the Internet include: possibilities to gather and process data regarding user’s behaviour, processes of matching content with individual’s profile, threats of spyware, an emergence of the political movement of privacy protection. Additionally, there is a brief review of hitherto empirical research on privacy and digital surveillance.
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The article aims at verification of the following thesis: the Internet as a platform of new interpersonal relationships promotes pro-social attitudes. They find their expression in various initiatives undertaken selflessly by individuals in order to actualise the common good (e.g. Linux, Wikipedia, support groups, knowledge-exchange portals, etc). Author’s own research has been used for exemplification purposes. It has been assumed that human inclination to reciprocity constitutes, among others, a source of pro-social attitudes. This inclination can be more or less efficiently actualized, depending on the structure of human relations. The significance of reciprocity increases when the role of institutionalism, formalism and centralisation decreases. Nowadays, the patterns of social relations are subject to profound transformations primarily as a result of the development of the Internet. New social relations are more reciprocal in character. The Internet creates new communication space in which social or even pro-social nature of people can be fruitfully actualised.
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