“The time for indifference is over”: Human Rights Commissioner call for decisive action on Roma rights
01 October 2025
Launching the new book, The Unheard 12 Million, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O'Flaherty, called for urgent action to confront the massive scale of racism and discrimination against Roma and Travellers, rooted in centuries of violence and exclusion, which stands as “a stark exposure of our shared failure.”
The new book and accompanying photo exhibition, which has been described as an eye-opening, ground-breaking, first-person account is an impassioned call to put an end to the anti-Roma racism and discrimination ingrained in our societies; an end to what Commissioner O’Flaherty has called “one of Europe’s greatest human rights scandals”.
The book draws primarily on his direct engagement with members of Roma and Traveller communities in his travels across Europe, and the narrative is driven by the lived experiences of Roma and Traveller women and girls and the power of their collective empowerment, agency and resilience for change.
“Sit in the back of the bus”
In Slovakia, five Romani women told the Commissioner their story, which evokes the historical refusal of Rosa Parks and the Jim Crow laws on seating in public buses in the deep South of the 1950s to mind – but minus any redemptive narrative like the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Romani women boarded a bus from Košice to Prešov for work. As they moved to sit in the front seats, the driver yelled, ‘Go to the back. If you want to sit, you sit in the back.’ He then called them names and further humiliated them. They reported the incident to the company, which admitted fault. “But when we took the bus again, we faced the same treatment. We don’t go to the police. We don’t trust them.”
Many of the stories told should prompt outrage at the extent to which injustice and cruelty stubbornly stalk the democracies of Europe. The Commissioner’s intent in publishing this book is clear, to compel decision makers and everybody else to act to uphold the human rights of Europe’s largest ethnic minority:
"This book is not just a collection of stories; it is a mirror reflecting our responsibility to build a world where everyone belongs. Their voices are strong and clear, and we must finally listen to them, respect them, and act on their demands for equality and justice. The time for indifference is over."
“I saw life without water. Life without electricity.”
The Commissioner witnessed living conditions he likened to ruins he has seen in war zones or in some of the most impoverished corners of the planet: “I saw life without water. Life without electricity.” In his visits to countries including Greece, North Macedonia, Slovakia and Ireland, he encountered squalor and segregation, and while there are national variations to the cruelty inflicted by neglect, he identified key common fundamentals to what’s needed for decent living conditions:
“Ensuring access to adequate homes and accommodation for entire communities requires more than just bricks and mortar. It demands working together with the communities from the start, intergovernmental cooperation, and technical expertise It also includes securing tenure, housing stock and lands in integrated areas, a functioning infrastructure that provides access to essential services, and ways to be able to pay the bills of the cost of living, as well as inclusive education – all shaped in dialogue with all concerned, so that inclusion does not give way to new forms of segregation.”
Women’s struggles for justice
The book includes compelling stories of women’s struggles for justice, safety and dignity within broken and failed systems, where women stand as the essential changemakers who empower, build bridges, and strive to shape a future beyond racism. It also includes accounts of obstetric violence, and recalls the grim legacy of forced sterilisations, noting that while nothing can undo the violence Romani women faced, “states owe these women truth, justice, reparation, and firm guarantees that such abuses will never happen again.” Across Europe, he heard account of Romani women being treated with indifference or disdain in maternity wards or in other healthcare settings, subjected to verbal abuse, physical mistreatment, or outright denial of care and delays: “These aren’t isolated cases – they’re part of a system where racism and gender-based discrimination intersect, denying women and girls their choices over their own bodies and lives.”
The stubborn persistent of racist segregation in schools
Despite European Court rulings and European Council Recommendations to end school segregation, the practice persists, and as the Commissioner observed, de facto segregation remains a reality for many Roma students. One young woman Polyxeni recalled her first day at the new primary school in Heraklion Lagkada:
“The non-Roma parents froze when they saw us. The other children stared. The next day, none of them came to school – nor the day after that, nor the next. I was shocked. The school became a ghost school. For days, only the Roma children attended.”
As ERRC Legal Director Senada Sali noted, non-Roma parents sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to prevent their children from sharing classrooms with Roma peers: “Even today, some non-Roma parents use false addresses to keep their children apart from Roma classmates.” She warned that the state needs to deal this kind of behaviour from non-Roma parents.
Another woman wondered how there could be so much resistance: “All we ask is for our children to receive quality education as everyone else. We were denied it as girls, and we won’t let that continue. Only then can they live better lives than we did.” The Commissioner struck an unequivocal note on the issue, and stated that whatever the multiple causes of segregation, “authorities have a duty to act – not just by treating the symptoms, but by dismantling the structural causes that sustain division.”
Policing and access to justice
The Commissioner found that across Europe, racial bias continues to influence policing practices – openly or covertly, and sometimes in violent ways. Targeted raids, ethnic profiling and excessive use of force, not only harm the individuals directly at the receiving end, they corrode public trust in systems tainted by racism. As regards ethnic profiling, the message is unambiguous:
“Being pursued for your ethnicity, rather than your actions, is a distinct and dangerous form of racial discrimination – one that must be explicitly outlawed. Racial profiling generates humiliation, bolsters prejudice and turns entire groups away from the institutions meant to serve them.”
Commissioner O’Flaherty recalls that on his travels he has collected ‘enraging stories’ explaining why fear of the police has taken root through lived experience; and why Roma and Travellers widely perceive the justice system as stacked against them – overpoliced as suspects and under-protected as victims.
“Romani and Traveller women tell me they think twice about calling the police even in cases of gender-based violence or domestic abuse. Those who do are often met with dismissal: ‘Violence is normal in your community,’ they’re told. ‘We can’t intervene.’”
Such prejudices are not only false, but perilous, for this neglect leaves women doubly trapped: “by violence, and by institutions that are supposed to protect them, but instead look away. Claiming women’s lives time and again.” The Commissioner calls for policing that is rights compliant, fully accountable, and free of institutional racism: “A call for urgent, lasting change: for an end to impunity and a justice system that protects rather than abandons, no matter who you are, or where you come from.”
This book stands as an impassioned rallying call, and a reminder that investment must reach a vital area: the racism embedded within state institutions, the police and courts, the centres of power. But support is often missing, or withdrawn, precisely from where it can have decisive impact – with strategic litigation as a stark example. Victories in court pave the way for justice by compelling national authorities and others to act; they also have a strong normative impact concerning what is acceptable, fair and just in our societies. Human rights litigation needs to be funded to pursue justice, and limited funding remains a problem, and as the Commissioner notes, “If we are serious about advancing the human rights of Roma and Travellers, we must confront racism where it may be most entrenched.” Without core funding to keep them afloat, survival becomes a daily struggle for rights-based civil organisations, still as the Commissioner notes, “they are the ones called to fill every gap the state leaves behind. They show up when no one else does.”
THE UNHEARD 12 MILLION: The unstoppable voices of Roma and Traveller Women
By Michael O’Flaherty Commissioner for Human Rights, can be accessed here.
