Fundamental Rights – Page 4

EU Child Guarantee: Don’t leave Roma children behind

Input to the European Commission consultation on the Roadmap for a Council Recommendation for a Child Guarantee

The European Commission will be proposing a Child Guarantee in 2021, an instrument specifically designed to tackle the situation of children in need.

The Child Guarantee is meant to ensure that all children in Europe who are at risk of poverty, social exclusion, or are otherwise disadvantaged, have access to essential services of good quality.

It will recommend that EU countries invest in and develop strategies and action plans to ensure that children in need have access to free or affordable services such as education, healthcare, nutrition & housing, culture and leisure activities.

ERGO Network strongly welcomes the initiative for an EU Child Guarantee and has given input into the Roadmap leading towards it (Download the full input). With Roma children especially hard hit by poverty, we appreciate the attention paid to this important topic.

The first years of a child’s life are the most important in their personal development, and yet Roma children have been left behind for centuries in what concerns a good start in life. While the Roadmap towards the Child Guarantee identifies several groups of “children in need”, Roma children are not one of them. This is unacceptable, where the Fundamental Rights Agency found that every third Roma child (30%) lives in households where someone went to bed hungry at least once in the previous month, and only about half (53%) of young Roma children are enrolled in early childhood education and care programmes. Unless they are explicitly mentioned as target group and specific measures put in place to deal with very specific needs, experience shows that Roma children will once again be left behind.

The Roadmap features an almost exclusive focus on services, where nothing is said about access to income. There are no poor children in rich families, and wrap-around support for parents must be part of the solution, including income support and pathway approaches towards sustainable, quality jobs. Currently, only 43% of Roma aged 20-64% are in paid work, and over 80% of Europe’s Roma are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, according to FRA. Poverty has a considerable impact on the children’s physical, mental, and emotional development, and increases the chances of lagging behind in all the aspects of their adult life.

The vicious circles of poverty, spatial segregation, and discrimination act as powerful barriers, preventing Roma children from accessing education on equal footing with their non-Roma peers. While education, including early childhood education and care, is touted to be free in many countries, it is de facto not, and many poor Roma families can’t cope with the associated costs of clothing, nappies, transport, hygiene etc. Lack of majority languages skills, limited access to early childhood education and care, and a state of poverty which does not allow for proper studying at home mean that Roma children end up segregated and bullied by colleagues, their parents, and staff alike, and even sometimes placed in schooling for children with learning disabilities. During the Covid-19 pandemic and associated protection and prevention measures, many Roma children found themselves unable to access online education, due to absent infrastructure and equipment (the digital divide).

In what concerns housing, many Roma neighbourhoods are segregated or isolated, with no childcare or healthcare facilities nearby. Adequate housing is an urgent priority for Roma communities, as one in three Roma (32%) live in households with a leaking roof, damp walls, or rot, one in five Roma (20%) live in dwellings that are too dark, and 78% of Roma live in overcrowded households. These disastrous living conditions have a tremendously damaging impact on the health and wellbeing of Roma children, who experience significant health inequalities. The life expectancy of Roma across Europe is 10 to 15 years lower than of the majority population. In many countries, the public health infrastructure does not cover Roma communities, with the nearest clinic (not to mention hospital) often located far away. Additional complicating factors include the lack of identity papers, the lack a legal address, the lack of access to a bank account, the lack of information about registration processes and available services, as well as language barriers. Investing in children must mean, first and foremost, guaranteeing good health and wellbeing for all, particularly those suffering the most disadvantages, such as Roma children.

In order to ensure that Roma children develop and thrive while enjoying the same opportunities as their non-Roma peers, it is fundamental to tackle antigypsyism in all its forms, as well as intersectional discrimination. 41% of Roma feel they have been discriminated against in everyday situations such as looking for work, at work, or when trying to access housing, health, and education – and this is the environment that Roma children grow up in. This should be a de facto horizontal priority in the fields of education, employment, health, housing, and poverty reduction. Preventive and proactive measures are needed to alter public perceptions, prevalent misrepresentations, and misinformation about Roma, and to develop positive counter-narratives. The Child Guarantee should strive to ensure the teaching of Romani language and history in schools, including about the Holocaust and slavery of Roma across Member States, as well as for the necessary dedicated special pedagogical support, including trained Roma education mediators in communities.

The Covid-19 situation highlights the urgent need to invest in proper care services and income support to children and their families. In order to provide equal opportunities for every Roma child, we must guarantee that Roma children and families are not left behind in the Child Guarantee. Appropriate links must be made to the objectives of the EU Strategic Framework for Roma Equality and Inclusion, and interplay ensured between the implementation of the Child Guarantee multi-annual national strategies and the National Roma Integration Strategies. The EU Cohesion Policy and recovery funds will also have a key role to play.

The Child Guarantee will only be effective if it achieves wide ownership by beneficiaries, if it is rooted in direct evidence from the ground about what works and what is needed, and if its delivery and monitoring are underpinned by a comprehensive and meaningful partnership of all stakeholders, including civil society organisations. Tailored outreach measures need to be put in place to ensure the participation of Roma children and that of their parents, including through the civil society organisations representing them. Clear dialogue and cooperation protocols need to be put in place, to ensure that the voice of marginalised and racialised children is heard and taken into account, while necessary financial resources need to be made available to support Roma NGOs and build awareness, participation, and active citizenship, as well as more resilient democracies.

ERGO Network response to the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021

ERGO Network response to the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021

While there is no explicit mention of the European Roma in this year’s Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy, ERGO Network welcomes that “people with a minority racial or ethnic background” are indicated as having been disproportionately hit by the coronavirus crisis (page 9). We further salute commitments to “address long-standing challenges that affect the fairness
in society … and rising inequalities” (page 3), and to “support those who have been hit hardest by the crisis, such as … vulnerable groups” (page 4). Other proposed measures have the potential of being positive for Roma communities, hinging on the right implementation: reducing inequalities, addressing labour market segmentation, increasing the inclusiveness of the education systems (particularly for disadvantaged groups), ensuring equal access to affordable, accessible, quality healthcare, childcare, and long term care, tackling the digital divide, reducing energy poverty, and ensuring a just and socially fair transition across green policy areas.

Download the response here

UN Side event on discrimination based on work and descent

UN Side event on discrimination based on work and descent

Since 2019, as a consequence of ERGO Network’s work on the Sustainable Development Goals for Roma inclusion, ERGO Director Gabriela Hrabanova works together with the Global Forum on Discrimination on Work and Descent (GFoD), the Asia Dalit Rights Forum and other global minority organisations to raise awareness of the important topic Discrimination based on Work and Descent (DWD) at the United Nations level and to bring together Roma with other communities victims of DWD.

In the framework of the 2020 United Nations General Assembly, a series of side events took place in New York and online organised by GFoD and with the support of the Permanent Mission of Germany in New York, which attracted the participation of politicians and members of civil society from across the world. Besides ERGO Network Director Gabriela Hrabanova also Member of the European Parliament Romeo Franz (Greens/EFA) was a panelist in the meeting.

This year, due to the pandemic, the Forum took the form of a Round Table with 15 Parliamentarians from countries in Africa (Somalia, Niger, Mauritania), Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Brazil and Europe (Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Belgium).

The discussions focused mostly on the strategies for the caucus of MPs to make appropriate and effective interventions at both UN & Regional Bodies, and with bilateral bodies/processes towards the elimination of DWD globally. An additional topic was the outlining of measures for building up the International Parliamentarians Forum on DWD to operate as an effective platform at global and regional level.

The participants discussed best practices and possible strategies at local, national, regional and UN level to improve the fight against DWD.

Discrimination based on work and descent affects around 260 million people worldwide. Communities discriminated on work and descent are one of the most excluded and segregated groups globally, and this affects their daily social, economic, political, civil and cultural life. Compared to the majority population in their respective countries, Dalits in South Asia have less access to education, communities of former and modern slavery in Mauretania are economically deprived and Roma in Europe have less access to health care and services.

International cooperation around the topic of DWD has been gaining momentum since 2015, when DWD communities looking for solidarity beyond their own countries and communities found similar discrimination practices among African, European and Latin American communities and founded The Inclusivity Project at international level. But the kick-off for the Forum was a Round Table at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Senegal in New York in 2019. Seven parliamentarians from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Somalia and Sri Lanka have discussed DWD and options for action with representatives from European Roma networks, the African Network on DWD and Slavery, the Asia Dalit Rights Forum and Quilombola from Brazil.

As a consequence of all endeavours in the last decades the Global Forum on DWD – against Casteism, Antigypsyism & Traditional and contemporary forms of slavery has been formed during the first Congress on DWD in September 2019 in New York with representation by descendants of former slaves, Burakumin, Dalis, Quilomboa, Sinti & Roma.

Digital High-Level Conference

Digital High-Level Conference on the new Strategic EU Framework for Equality, Inclusion and Participation of Roma until 2030

Instead of the traditional “EU Roma Platform”, the German EU Presidency and the European Commission will organize on the 12 October the “Digital High-Level Conference on the new Strategic EU Framework for Equality, Inclusion and Participation of Roma until 2030”, bringing together all relevant stakeholders from the EU member states and enlargement countries to launch the new “EU Roma strategic framework for equality, inclusion and participation”.

The EU Coalition of Roma and pro-Roma organisations will participate at the event to bring the views of Roma civil society to the table, with ERGO Network being well represented with several speakers.

ERGO Network Director will represent civil society in the Opening Panel to ask questions to EU Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli, who will launch the new Strategic Framework. The co-chair of ERGO Network’s board and former MEP Soraya Post will contribute to the panel on Roma participation, while ERGO Network vice-chair Adriatik Hasantari and Director of Roma Active Albania will talk about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Roma.

The conference, which will be opened by German Minister of the Interior, Building and Community Horst Seehofer, will provide a forum for discussion of priorities for the next 10 years, such as combatting antigypsyism, equality, inclusion and participation, through dialogue and exchange of knowledge and experiences, at all levels. It will also highlight Member States’ perspectives and give stakeholders an opportunity to make their voices heard.

ERGO Network together with its partners has inputted into the development of the new Strategic Framework for Equality, Inclusion and Participation of Roma all along the way with recommendations.

ERGO Network also invested in the coordination of the Roma and pro-Roma Civil society under the banner of the EU Roma post-2020 Coalition. The coalition brought together its expertise to formulate questions for Commissioner Dalli and to create common messages. The partners in the coalition are furthermore preparing a reflection to the EC Communication on theStrategic EU Framework for Equality, Inclusion and Participation of Roma until 2030 that will be published on the 6 October 2020.

ERGO Network will provide regular updates before and during the event on its social media channels.

Roma part of #BlackLivesMatter

Roma part of #BlackLivesMatter

On 25 May 2020 George Floyd, an African American man, was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mass protests in response to his death quickly spread across the United States and internationally in a joint mobilisation against police violence and structural racism. Across the world, people have started to take down statues of colonisers and racist figures. A global Black Lives Matter movement is surging alongside wider anti-racist movements in an attempt to restore centuries of injustice, killings and oppression of people of African descent, but also institutional and structural racism and discrimination of all ethnic and racialised minorities.

As ERGO Network we stand with the Black Lives Matter movement and we say it loud and clear: In Europe, Black and Brown Lives matter! We hope that everyone now protesting on the streets takes this into account in their political demands as well as in their own everyday lives.

Structural racism and discrimination against ethnic and racialised minorities are deeply rooted in European societies. Across the EU, people of African descent, Roma, Muslims, Jews and immigrants face widespread and entrenched prejudice and exclusion. Racial discrimination and harassment are common place.

Roma in Europe are more likely to live in poverty than the majority population, have a higher risk of unemployment and have poorer health – as tragically seen during the Covid-19 pandemic. They are exposed to racism by their co-citizens (with, in some countries, one third to half the population not wanting to work with Roma colleagues according to a Fundamental Rights Agency survey), and more often victims police brutality. Just in the last couple of months, 14 year old Gabriel Djordjevic was severely beaten by police in Paris, 5 Romani children between 7 and 11 were beaten by police in Slovakia, approximately 20 Romani men and women were beaten by police in Romania and a young man during a police control in the Netherlands.

The pandemic exposed the racial bias of the police even more: Between March and May 2020, Amnesty International documented cases of militarized quarantines of ten Roma settlements in Bulgaria and Slovakia. This disproportionate restriction on freedom of movement that selectively targets ethnic minority groups, without evidence that they represent an objective threat to public health or security, imposes an unnecessary and disproportionate burden on this group and amounts to discrimination.

It is regrettable that 70 years after the adoption of the European Convention of Human Rights and subsequent international and EU standards on equality and anti-discrimination, minorities continue to be racialised, harassed, attacked and killed in Europe because of their innate characteristics. It is scandalous that the EU and national legislative frameworks and state institutions fail to protect them and to educate themselves and the majority populations about historical facts, diversity, compassion and living together as equal human beings.

Looking at the construction, priorities and progress of the European Union, it is safe to claim that European leaders have prioritised economic growth over the protection of the most vulnerable groups in our societies and over ensuring equity of wealth and wellbeing across the world. The strong awakening, protesting and mobilisation of the majority population in times of a global pandemic to the persistent racism and dehumanization and consequences of colonialism, slavery and historic oppression such as the Holocaust is an unprecedented moment in the history of humanity. It speaks to the urgency with which world and European leaders need to take corresponding unprecedented steps to bring about fundamental changes in our society. Only with systemic change can we set up a social contract that ensures justice and equality for all, prioritizing those most marginalised and oppressed to date.

Since the start of the protests, many political figures in Europe have spoken out in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. While we appreciate condemnation of police violence in the US, the EU leadership has not said or done enough to acknowledge and address structural racism and racist police violence in the EU against ethnic and religious minorities. As quoted in the Financial Times on 3 June 2020, European Commission Vice-President Schinas went as far as saying “I do not think that we have issues now in Europe that blatantly pertain to police brutality or issues of race transcending into our systems.” This is a slap in the face of all victims of police violence in Europe, including many Roma. Member of the European Parliament Pierrette Herzberger Fofana set the record straight when she had the courage to publicly talk about her personal experience with racist police violence at the Gare du Nord in Brussels just a few days after Schinas’ comment.

Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana | Photo credit: European Parliament Audiovisual

In a rushed action, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution on anti-racism protests (2020/2685(RSP)) on 19 June. It shows that public pressure can work and that the Parliament sees an urgency to react, but failed to appropriately address structural racism in Europe. The title of the resolution is related to the US protests following the death of George Floyd, without a clear intention and focus on structural racism against all racialized minorities in Europe, triggered by events in the US. An immediate reaction and a resolution by the European Parliament requesting an unprecedented response by the European Commission and EU Council like in the case of Covid-19 is still necessary; therefore such a resolution should have focused primarily on EU Members States, Enlargement and Neighborhood Countries and involved Roma and other anti-racist civil society and racialized minorities in drafting it. Structural and institutional racism cannot be tackled without listening to those suffering under it. When it comes to its ambitions, the resolution is asking for an European Anti-Racism Summit, a comprehensive strategy against racism and discrimination and an EU Framework for National Action Plans Against Racism, the creation of a EU Council mechanism for equality and an interinstitutional task force to fight racism and discrimination at EU level.

Following the adoption of the resolution, the all-white European Commission held an internal debate on racism and decided that an “Action Plan to address racial discrimination and Afrophobia” would be prepared by Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli. While we believe this is a too low of a bargain for racialized minorities, we truly hope that this Action Plan on paper will really be followed up by REAL Action – not just by the EU institutions but also by its Member States and adhering countries, and that it will be prepared in close consultation and at equal level with ALL racialized minorities, including Roma, and CSOs.

Here are some of our recommendations to the EU institutions and member States.

Finally adopt the 10-year old draft of the Horizontal Anti-discrimination Directive
Systematically record and publish disaggregated data on hate crime
Fully transpose and apply the provisions of the Framework Decision on Combating Racism and Xenophobia, treating racist and xenophobic motivation as an aggravating circumstance
Address ongoing ill-treatment, profiling and over-policing of minorities by police officers.
Reform internal policies and working methods in order to ensure a fair representation of minority populations within EU institutions as well as an adequate participation and consultation of minority groups in EU decisions in policies, programmes and funding
Commit to an ambitious, comprehensive, and binding EU Strategic Framework for Roma to achieve equality, social and economic justice, and combat antigypsyism.
Ensure equitable access to quality inclusive education for all children and invest consistently in raising awareness and adequately teach European societies about their colonial and racist past, including the history of antigypsyism.
Define segregation as illegal in housing and in education.
Address discrimination of minority groups in employment.
Take into account the needs of racialised minorities and define them as a priority in all mainstream policies and measures of the Covid-19 recovery plan; meaningfully involve Roma stakeholders and their civil society organisations in the design, implementation, and monitoring of such recovery plans
Ensure funding for equality and fundamental rights of minority groups under the Multi-Annual Framework.

Find here a detailed briefing paper on the fundamental rights situation in Europe and a full list of our recommendations.

For more information on our work addressing antigypsyism in Europe, please contact Senior Advocacy Officer Isabela Mihalache (i.mihalache@ergonetwork.org).