Fighting for the Rights of Roma - A Productive Effort in the General Struggle for Human Rights
27 May 2004
A Productive Effort in the General Struggle for Human Rights - In February 2004, the ERRC spoke with Mr Nicolae Gheorghe, Advisor on Roma and Sinti issues at the Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe, based in Warsaw.
ERRC: What does the concept of Roma rights mean to you? Why was there a need for breaking down the concept of human rights into more specific fields of human rights - to Roma rights in particular?
Nicolae Gheorghe: Your journal is called Roma Rights. Your organisation is called European Roma Rights Center. I was a member of the first board of directors, established in the mid-1990s. At that time I thought that it was an accurate name. At this point, however, I have questions about it, in particular, I think that the wording "Roma Rights" is questionable. When I read the report on abuses of the Roma reproductive freedoms in Slovakia,1 my reaction was: "Well, it seems to me that we have reached a frontier of language. I do not think there are reproductive rights/freedoms of Roma different from the reproductive rights in general. When we decided to have children with my wife, we did not exercise Roma reproductive freedoms." I expressed this view when I met with the authors of the report. I do not argue about the substance of the report and I do not wish to diminish the role of this report in a particular context of human rights and political activism. Indeed, in the report the authors write about "...violations of Romani women's human rights, more specifically reproductive rights…" which, in my opinion, is more accurate. My argument is about the effects of using the term "Roma rights" in general and/or making reference to particular standards of human rights preceded by the name "Roma", frequently used in an adjectival form by speakers of English, the lingua franca in international communication. The meaning may become increasingly blurred when we refer to particular fields of human rights, such as in the expressions "Roma health rights", "Roma housing rights", etc. The effect is both semantic and practical.
I think that we have to rediscover at the level of thinking the idea underlying wonderful efforts such as the eight-year work of the ERRC. In my understanding, we speak about "Roma rights" to indicate the access of individuals and/or particular groups self-identifying as "Rom", "Romni", pl. "Roma", in a non-discriminatory way, to general human rights. States should respect human rights and basic freedoms agreed upon through international treaties and political documents, and incorporated in national legislation. They have the obligation to fulfil all these rights for all citizens and residents on their territories in a non-discriminatory way, irrespective of race, ethnic origin, colour, sex, religion, etc. We are not there, for sure, and that is why we need specific tools of action in order to promote (and/or to restore) the rights of various individuals and groups.
The term "Roma rights" and the political action based on it are just one particular tool for rights-oriented action under certain political circumstances, and not so much a particular field of human rights in itself.
For example, in 1995, in Romania, we (the activists at that time) protested against an administrative act, which recommended the use of the words ĹŁigan/ĹŁigani (Gypsy, Gypsies), instead of Rom/Romi, when referring to our ethnic group in the public discourse.2 We disputed this act of the public administration, and we argued for the right of members of ethnic groups to identify and to be publicly identified according to the names agreed upon with representatives of the respective ethnic groups. That political protest of ours was part of the larger process, which had started in the 1990s, for democratisation of governance practices inherited from the previous totalitarian regimes. It took a couple of years to settle the issue of the use of the terms "Romi" ("Roma") vs. "ĹŁigani" ("Gypsies", which we regarded as very pejorative), in the public administration of Romania. A number of non-governmental organisations used the formula "depturile romilor" (the rights of Roma) to highlight our dispute with the administration of the time and the lines of alliance/opposition among ourselves, the rank-and file activists, some of whom continued to use publicly "ĹŁigani" not only as part of the "vernacular" language of the inter-ethnic relations of everyday life, but also to indicate their allegiance to the Establishment. Eventually, we have initiated some coalitions with other activist groups in the emerging civil society of Romania in the mid-1990s - such as "former political prisoners", homosexuals, or even "human rights activists" (who have been branded by part of the public and the media of that time as being "paid from abroad"), proposing to them to challenge the "stigmatising identities" imposed by the practices of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in our society.
To the best of my knowledge, these local circumstances are also reflected in a number of documents adopted, among others, by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE, at that time the CSCE - the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Council of Europe such as, for example, Resolution 16/1995 "Towards a Tolerant Europe: The Contributions of Rroma (Gypsies)" and Resolution 44/1997 "Towards a Tolerant Europe: The Contribution of Roma", adopted by the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in Europe (CLRAE). In one of these documents we find the wording "respect for Roma (Gypsies) right to their own cultural identity." Through these and other examples (for example the documents of the Council of Europe and the European Union of the 1970s, 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s) we notice, the hesitations, somewhat painful, of the public discourse (including ourselves) with regard to the ethnic name of our people.
Evoking this episode of the activism in the mid-1990s in Romania, I would like to stress that the formula "the rights of Roma" has meaning in specific political circumstances, in connection to cases of abuse of well-defined sets of human rights. This formula is also part of a discourse and practice aiming to enhance the mobilisation of Roma and foster coalitions with different interest groups in a given society, in order to promote changes in political life and in the work of the public institutions (at a later stage I discovered the English word mainstreaming to describe or "reconstruct" part of our agenda ten years ago). It was during that particular episode of activism, (which took some years) that some of us (grouped around the non-governmental organisation Romani CRISS and other NGOs) have articulated other grievances and focused on the combat against discrimination by the state administration as an alternative to other platforms, which perceived the issue of ĹŁigani as a "social problem" (understood in terms of marginality and criminality), or as part of the "combat against poverty", or as a matter of national-minority-folklore shows, etc. We have made our choices: Our associations are much more part of the emerging Romanian civil society than part of the electoral/parliamentary platforms advanced for the benefit of particular national minorities (with precise provisions in the Romanian Constitution and Electoral law and policy making); we are much more an element of the civil society building within the Romani communities than an actor in the ethnic-identity-building process (there are other groups militating for this platform); we are more related to other associations and interest groups, involved in articulating the human rights approach to the issues affecting Roma, Sinti, Gypsies, etc. at European level than an agency for local community development.
An evolution of the word Roma has taken place in the past 15 years of public action and discourse about rights, reaching the complex meaning of the political categorisation embodied in the term "Roma rights" as used in current discussions, projects, institutions, etc. One direction of this evolution has been to generalise the meaning of this expression by disconnecting it from the particular circumstances in which it has a clear meaning and power of mobilising a variety of actors (including representatives of public institutions, grass-roots human rights activists, etc.). Another development has been the understanding (and use) of the Roma rights discourse in the context of (ethnic)-identity-building rather than in the context of combating discrimination, racism, intolerance, and xenophobia. The process of ethnic-identity-building is also a legitimate practice and is protected by the rights of national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural groups.
Therefore, in the group of human rights activists and/or officers (at least those, who communicate in the English language), we have to re-examine our language, as a pre-requisite for a better focus of our attention and practices, and make sure that when we use the term "Roma rights" we deal with combating discrimination in the access to general human rights of persons belonging to a particular group. If we privilege generalisations over the description of and producing of evidence about concrete instances of human rights violations (including the technicalities of the legal dimension of the human rights violations), we face certain risks. Namely, we risk jumping (or rather falling) into some form of ideological discourse, which, in my opinion, may diminish the power of the rights discourse and may lead us to distorted practices resulting from the reification of notions such as "Roma rights".
My message in this interview is that we should think about clarifying the terminology of our rights-oriented practices and institutions; they had a meaning in the 1990s as "Roma rights" (as, for example, in the title "European Roma Rights Center") but, I think, they will start losing their meaning in the next decade. How to accomplish this? We must be critical and creative at the level of thinking and at the level of talking. We need a more in-depth analysis of the various meanings and legal-political contexts in which the expression "Roma rights" has been constructed, pragmatically used, debated, distorted, etc. Then we have to bring these conceptual levels to the level of an ever-developing practice - quite remarkably achieved by the ERRC, which has made serious progresses and contributions to the rights movement.
I am being self-critical, because I also feel responsible for some of the confusion, which was generated among people with whom I work. We wanted to give a voice to the Roma but without informing them of what is the context of human rights, the legal context of the human rights. We went too far in generalising "Roma rights", taking them out of context, and making "them" an object of the discourse. This may degrade the original rhetoric of "Roma rights" in demagogy, ideologies, etc.
At the level of practice, we are much better. I read about the success of the ERRC case before the European Court of Human Rights in its ruling on Nachova vs. Bulgaria. This is an important success. This is mainstream, solid, human rights work in favour of persons who are Roma and who usually stay at the margin of the democratic institutions. This is the way that I think we have to go forward.
ERRC: What are the major rights issues that make the rights of Roma in Europe different from the rights of other minorities? Do you think that the problems of Roma in Europe need a more urgent intervention than the problems of other minorities?
N. G.: Here we need clarification of the processes by which we define priorities. There is a big catalogue of human rights, and there are groups of people dispersed throughout the European states, categorised as Roma in Europe and/or Europe's Roma, whose access to these rights is often much more limited in comparison to the majority population and/or to "major national minorities" within the given states. In most of the European states public recognition of the mere existence of groups self-identifying as Roma is a very recent and still fragile development. Then, we have the phenomenon of the non-acknowledgment (or insufficient acknowledgment, to sound more "moderate") in Europe of racial and racist mentalities and practices associated with the categorisation of individuals and groups as "ĹŁigani", "Gypsies", "Zigeuner" and other derogatory names, which carry with them the seeds of the open or more subtle forms of discrimination in various institutional and social activities. There is a "racial fracture" in many European societies and the incorporation of this unacknowledged, non-tackled fracture in the practices related to the variety of groups generally designated with the names Roma, Sinti, Gypsies, Travellers, etc., makes the rights-oriented actions of these groups and/or on behalf of persons belonging to such groups both different and more difficult than the actions promoting the rights of persons belonging to other ethnic or national minorities.
At the policy level, there is always a need to pri-oritise in order to ensure the effective access of particular individuals and/or groups of people to particular sets of rights, in particular circumstances. The instruments and the resources for action are dramatically scarce and both the activists and the policy-makers have to choose an "entry strategy" in coping with the complexity of needs. For example, one of the priorities of the recently adopted Action Plan for the Improvement of the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area is to legalise the housing of Romani individuals and families, so that people can realise their voting rights, their rights of protection of the family by the State and other social rights.
ERRC: In terms of respect for human and/or minority rights, do you see a difference between Roma and other ethnic minorities in Europe? Do you believe Roma are more vulnerable to discrimination than other minorities, and if yes, what do you think are the reason(s)?
N. G.: If we consider the rights of the national minorities, the answer is simple: In many European states the Roma and Sinti populations have not yet been acknowledged as an ethnic group and their minority rights (linguistic, cultural, etc.) are not protected on an equal basis with other ethnic groups enjoying the status of national minorities according to national laws. If we consider the "Roma and Sinti issues" as issues of combating and eliminating various forms of discrimination, xenophobia, and racism, I would answer your question in the affirmative: there is a greater vulnerability of persons and groups belonging to populations catergorised as Roma, Sinti, etc. It is not a coincidence that in the Action Plan for the Improvement of the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area, the OSCE participating States commit themselves to "eradicate discrimination against them [Roma and Sinti]".
I may elaborate my quick answer with a reference to a world-wide survey with between 300 or 400 groups, whose vulnerabilities were assessed on a multi-dimensional index of political, economic, demographic, environmental, and human rights factors. This study was done in the early 1980s. Based on this world-wide framework, the Roma of Europe had a rather high risk of vulnerability to abuse of human rights, and in particular during conflict situations. At the end of the 1990s, the group updated their research and found that the vulnerability risks of Roma in Europe were much higher. The results of these studies are reported also in an article by Edward Bakker, published in a recent issue of the Helsinki Monitor - a quarterly on Security and Cooperation in Europe, published by the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, and International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights.
Since we work exclusively with groups categorised as Roma and we have NGOs and institutions like yours, we sometimes leave the impression among Roma that they are not only more vulnerable to discrimination than other groups, but also that they are some kind of "special victims". Often activists ignore the fact that there are other groups in similar situations of vulnerability. If we want to promote human rights, we have to promote universal human nights and must be aware about the abuses of the rights of other individuals and peoples in India, Africa, or even here in Europe. There is an understanding among some Romani activists that they can reinforce their fight and agendas by claiming that this or that Roma group or "the Roma" in general are the most discriminated people, and that discrimination is the very condition of being Roma. Raising awareness about the discrimination suffered by individuals and groups racially identified as ĹŁigani, Zigeuner, Gypsies, has been the dominant agenda of the human rights and political activism over the past years. We tried to encourage and empower these activist groups by telling them, "You're much more discriminated against than the others". In the years to come, I think, we have to balance this feeling and discourse in order to put the human rights work on a more solid, mature basis. You can reach this maturity when you also take care of the "other" and not just of yourself. It seems to me that internalising too much the victim mentality may lead to a lack of critical thinking and to undermining the process of political mobilisation among the Romani activists and among the members of the grass-roots communities.
Let's take an illustration. Following the riots sparked off by electricity power cuts in a Romani neighbourhood in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, about two years ago, the Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues commissioned a study about such riots to a young analyst and activist, who was himself Romani. One of his findings was that some Roma with whom he spoke didn't make the distinction between human rights, which should be respected and protected by the states, and social services, which are provided by private companies. Some Roma consider that they are entitled to receive electricity, gas, and water without necessarily paying for these services. The study argues that such way of thinking may put some particular groups of Roma at odds with the development of the post-Communist societies striving for transition to and consolidation of democratic institutions. Moreover, in these societies the privatisation of some services and the market economy in which people pay for services are a priority.
Or, trying to answer your question from a different angle. What about raising awareness among the variety of groups designated by the word Roma on the role of the "colour" in the racial and "racialised" perceptions by the public and in particular cases and forms of discrimination by public bodies? Building on this awareness, how can our activism and political action be strengthened and how can we form coalitions not only around ethnic identities (whose dynamic may evolve toward "marked" and exclusive boundaries), but also based on the shared interests with other "peoples of colour" in local/national societies, in Europe and world-wide? Actually, this is one of the messages of including Roma issues in the World Conference Against Racism and its documents. Do we follow and act upon this message enough?
ERRC: Do you think that affirmative action is needed? How do you think the negative impact of affirmative action can be overcome, i.e. what should be done to prepare our societies to accept affirmative action as a measure which would eventually benefit everyone and not only the specific group to which it is targeted? How should we avoid intensifying negative attitudes towards Roma as a result of the implementation of certain affirmative actions?
N. G.: Yes, some forms of affirmative action are needed. But we should try greater intellectual discipline when recommending and using specific measures of affirmative action in policy making on particular Romani groups, in particular local/national contexts. The concept of affirmative action came from a very specific political context, which is that of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s. Now we are using it somehow indiscriminately, without trying to adapt the concept to the particular contexts in which we live. I followed a recent discussion of positive discrimination, or affirmative action, in France, in connection to the status of the Muslims, the controversies around the headscarf, etc. Here there is another political context, a different history of public institutions, and the concept of affirmative action discussed in this context has a different meaning. When applying this concept to populations categorised as Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, or generally in Europe, I think we are using the word somehow uncritically.
There are already Roma-related practices in affirmative action in various states. In Romania, for example, there is a quota for students in colleges claiming Romani descent. There is an increasing diversity of college programmes open to such quotas, and there is a "build-up" with quotas to the level of vocational training. There are also reserved seats for national minorities in the legislature, so there are members of parliament claiming a "Romani political identity". Since 2000, the position of "Roma experts" in the district administration and in local municipalities was introduced in Romania. I use Romania as an example, because such quotas have been implemented since the early 1990s and because it is the situation that I know a little bit better. But, in Bulgaria, in the Czech Republic, Slovenia or Slovakia, we can provide similar comparisons. In Slovenia, for example, there is some kind of affirmative action enacted by law. There are reserved seats for Roma representatives in the local councils of municipalities with Romani settlements.
So, first of all, we should ask specifically what the situation and context is, then we can better discuss the effects and/or the ethics of making use of group rights. One side-effect of affirmative action for Roma is that it created a group of persons who tend to interpret affirmative action as some sort of permanent entitlement to group rights. Entitlements (read as "group privileges") are connected with a different social history, with the feudal aristocracy, which had hereditary rights. We have a group of people right now, among the younger generation, including some of your co-workers and some who are very close to me, who benefited from the quota system to enter colleges and who seem to remain for the rest of their lives marked by that fact. They consider that all the time they have to be under some kind of quota, and are in some protected market for jobs, for payments, for participating in political life, and so on and so forth.
From my point of view, this is the side effect of having special measures to compensate a group for previous discrimination. The special measures (as defined by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) are designed as temporary and task-oriented. The side effect is the distorted perception of special measures for compensation of abuse and/or lack of specific rights as some kind of particular rights, which people may think will last forever and will be hereditary (in some particular families, larger kinship groups, etc.). Another side effect that I noticed in Romania is that some of those who are benefiting from the quota in education do not come from the most disadvantaged groups/families among the Roma. I have found that many of those who benefit from the quota system are middle-class persons, from well-established families (within Romani society), quite advanced in their integration in Romanian society, up to the point of being culturally assimilated.
On the other hand, many people who are blocked in their access to education rights, living in oppression and discrimination in their daily life, and who are not from well-off families, do not enjoy the benefits of the quota system. There is a distortion here. Those who have access to the quotas in colleges and then to better job opportunities, requiring college education, are not the most disadvantaged/discriminated. Well, I am aware that these phenomena are connected with the dynamic of political mobilisation, with the formation and the role of the middle class or the "modernising elite" among populations who experience social exclusion, under-development, class subordination (up to experiences of slavery as it is the case of ĹŁigani throughout the social history of the Romanian principalities). Currently, we may notice that the quota system is one of the factors reproducing a kind of social inequality among Roma in education, in which those who have the experience of cultural integration are now privileged over those who are really discriminated against and disadvantaged. And the former group speaks in the name of the latter group, although there is a huge gap between the two groups.
Thus the affirmative action discourse, which has emerged with a view to compensating deprivation of rights and abuse of rights, may become a sort of rhetoric, lacking context. Actually, I have noticed the alienation of some young, highly educated Roma, who have been to national or European universities like the Central European University, for example. They don't like any more to be in contact with grassroots communities. They do not like to be around the uneducated, who don't have computers or emails and who don't speak English. This lack of communication is widening, in my view. We have to think about that, and to correct this situation. I don't think that the quota system is for people coming from families, which are already integrated in society. I think it's for those who are discriminated, the disadvantaged, those who don't have access to such rights. However, when we speak about "Roma rights", whoever is presented as being Roma - and sometimes identity is interpreted in a purely subjective way, is entitled to the rights and resources provided under the name of affirmative action. We have to be very careful about that.
Addressing another part of your question - how should we avoid intensifying negative attitudes towards Roma as a result of the implementation of affirmative action? I do not have a quick answer, or a "recipe". It is a serious issue needing an in-depth analysis and a lot of open talks. I may sketch a beginning of an answer, in the logic of this discussion, reminding that the human/civil rights action in favour of particular Roma persons and groups may be also connected with the rights of other particular persons and groups in particular local, national, international contexts and circumstances. The "Roma rights"-oriented practice may be more productive as a basis for confidence- and coalition-building among various groups in given local and/or supra-local contexts, rather than for building identities and reinforcing interests rooted in a particularistic, sometimes exclusive, group ideology (be it ethnic-kinship groupings, national, communitarian, etc).
Take the programmes for combating poverty and/or for community development: Fund-raising for "Roma programmes" may be part of programmes for the support of coalitions of local Romani families/groups and other persons/groups experiencing social exclusion, deprivation of rights, various forms and levels of poverty, etc. in a given local context. In this way, having Roma-related programmes in a given society may be perceived as an asset, as a resource, rather than an exclusive right or a burden. I know that such an answer is far from being complete or convincing. I think that we better look into existing practices here and there… maybe we may find the embryo of a "good practice" and of a better answer to your question. Let's go to Plovdiv and try such a practice in connection with the recently built social houses with the financial support of the Council of Europe's Bank for Development. Or, even more challenging, try to find a solution to release the recent tensions in eastern Slovakia, while maintaining a level of social support for the impoverished, segregated Romani families in the localities of the region.
ERRC: Governmental programmes on Roma are emerging in many European countries. How important do you think their role is in fighting for Roma rights?
N. G.: The governmental policies that I've read and witnessed are political documents. I think their use is to create a basis for lobbying inside the government of a particular country. The connection between these policies and the realities of everyday life, however, is still very loose. Take the case of Roma in Slovakia, for example, because of the recent unrest in the country and the debates in the international media. There are a number of Roma-related policy documents adopted since early 1990s. It is easy to claim that most of these documents are highly ineffective. Nevertheless, I would be a little more moderate, saying that there is a level of effectiveness, at least in generating a political basis for lobbying and advocacy within the government structures. The Plenipotentiary Commissioner for Roma communities of the Slovak Government may take advantage of these documents to negotiate for more resources (political, human, expertise, finance, etc.) with the various Ministries, etc., who usually do not think about Roma as part of their agenda, and even less so when they allocate budgets for housing, infrastructure, schooling, etc. Sometimes, rights activists may find more open-minded ministers - let's say, from fresh memory, the Deputy Minister of Labour in Albania, or the Minister of Education in the previous government of Romania, or the State Secretary currently in charge of national minorities. They can lobby more easily, though still with a lot of difficulties, to mainstream (this is the magic word!) Romani-related issues in the agenda of the public administration which is usually completely unaware of, and reluctant to acknowledge the gravity of these issues.
Recently, I took part in a meeting organised in Skopje, by the US-based non-governmental organisation Project on Ethnic Relations with the Ministry of Labour and a number of Roma activists, to discuss the drafting and adoption of a governmental "Roma strategy". I saw that we are going to re-enact in (the Former Yugoslav republic of) Macedonia a process, which had been enacted in Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, etc. during the mid-1990s. And I understand now, looking back and looking forward, what may be the role of these documents. They can create a political platform for lobbying for Roma-related interests within the political class of a given country. Take the Programme for the Equal Integration of the Roma in Bulgaria. It was adopted in 1999, and only in September last year did the government adopt an action plan to implement it. For a couple of years the Framework Programme was a purely political document, quite advanced as a rights-oriented "text" in comparison to similar documents in other countries at that time. But that document was rather difficult "digest" for the mainstream political culture of Bulgaria. In informal talks, even some Romani representatives (who otherwise, have been involved in the NGOs round-table process which drafted the Framework Programme), did not agree with the statement in the document that the main problem of Roma in Bulgaria was discrimination rooted in the institutions and in public life; they thought that such a statement is detrimental to the "national interest" of their country. But, nevertheless, in five years, the Programme has proven to provide a good basis for the next steps - the adoption of anti-discrimination legislation in Bulgaria, and I think that was remarkable. That was the first goal formulated in the Framework Programme.
This Programme also provided a good basis for advocacy on the part of the NGOs, as well as on the part of some segments of the government, and of parliament too, which eventually adopted the law. And this law is undoubtedly stronger than the governmental strategy on Roma itself.
ERRC: What is the future for Roma and Roma rights?
N. G.: We are faced with both opportunities and challenges - on the one hand, there is a more explicit political commitment to address the rights of Roma and Sinti, in some particular countries, on the other, there is a lack of political vision. It would not be easy, and we have to be aware of that. I notice among the activists and the experts or governmental officers, some scepticism and confusion now as compared to the 1990s. You can interpret this in different ways. I interpret it as being a sign of maturation. Now we better realise that the scale and the complexity of the problem are immense. We have to change the mentality of the political class in many countries, and not only in countries that are new democracies. It is a huge, huge change in the political mentalities in general that should take place. Fighting for the rights of persons belonging to Roma groups, is a productive entry in the general combat to raise the quality of the human rights work and of the human rights fight in the coming decades, not only for Romani persons, but for human rights practices in general.
There are a number of short-term prospects and long-term initiatives directly and /or indirectly connected with the betterment of the situation of Roma and Sinti, among others - the enlargement of the Europeans Union and the inclusion of countries with large Romani communities; the launching of a European Forum for Roma and Travellers, in connection with the Council of Europe, and possibly with other inter-governmental organisations; the implementation of the OSCE Action Plan on Roma and Sinti; the launching of the Decade for Roma Inclusion, 2005-2015;3 and at a more modest level, the Roma-related human rights work of various NGOs.
I see some promising developments, your organisation is a frontrunner in this process of maturation of the human rights work, taking the case of Roma, as individuals or as groups, as a test case, to generate innovation in the implementation of human rights in particular areas of government and society. We need new energies for this kind of human rights work, which has to generate a mass movement. We are still, with the human rights work for Roma, very few people, and I'm a little bit worried that it becomes increasingly officers' work, or administrative work, or "project-oriented" work. Well, I belong to the "older generation" of activists for the rights of Romani groups, I recognise my limits, I am maybe too critical or "grumbling". Sometimes, I think that we are about to lose the element of what we anticipated to become a mass civil rights movement if we are not careful in the next couple of years. Of course, a civil rights movement has always an element of spontaneity, resulting from a combination of human energies and political circumstances. In preparation to achieve that spontaneity (difficult "to project" or to "plan"), we need thousands of people who are trained in the human rights as a collective mentality, and a morality; and in the technicalities of advocating human rights for particular individuals and groups. We need to amass a higher level of human resources, and have ten thousand, twenty thousand of people regularly involved in this fight to implement the human rights for those categorised (even "racialised") as Roma. I think that then we are moving to another stage of the movement, perhaps we will have a better slogan than the current "Roma Rights".
Endnotes:
- Editor’s note: The publication referred to is the report “Body and Soul: Forced Sterilization and Other Assaults on Roma Reproductive Freedom in Slovakia”, by the New York-based non-governmental organisation Center for Reproductive Rights and the Košice-based Poradna pre obcianske a ludské pravá.
- Editor’s note: By Memorandum No. H (03)/169 of January 31, 1995, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs decreed that the Romanian Roma should be called “þigani” and not “Roma” as the latter name “was likely to be confused with the Romanians.” The memorandum provoked protest by Romanian Roma as the word þigan bears intensely negative associations in Romanian society.
- The Decade of Roma Inclusion is an international initiative launched in June 2003 by the World Bank and the Open Society Institute with the goal to “accelerate and frame progress in improving the situation of Europe’s Roma populations” and “move beyond declarations and to create a coordinated framework foractions to improve the economic status and social inclusion of the Roma population”. For more information see: http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/eca/ecshd.nsf/0/5acb3fb63019d944c1256d6a00438015?opendocument& Start=1&Count=1000&ExpandView.
