Members of nineteen families facing eviction file in to a small conference room. The multigenerational group listens intently as LifeTogether director Sri Kumar Vishwanathan describes the situation: his organization, in partnership with several private firms, was, at the last minute, able to secure eighteen apartments on the outskirts of town for families who have defaulted on rent, and are thus being forced to move out of a building in one of the city’s “socially excluded Romani locations.” The apartments offered to those present contain only bare walls, no appliances and insufficient facilities–a sink, but no shower or tub.

[Sri Kumar Vishwanathan, head of LifeTogether, meets with families facing eviction]

This particular community’s unemployment rate stands at a shocking 100 percent, a phenomenon that is common in many of the poor Czech Romani enclaves. In order to survive, families often rely on money lenders who use unethical practices, charging exorbitant amounts of interest, thus forcing families into vicious cycles of poverty which are difficult to break.

As a result of their dire economic situation and deeply entrenched systemic discrimination, several families at the meeting have already had some of their children taken away by the state and at least four others are in danger of having their children placed into state care.

“The mothers were ashamed to say their children are under the threat of being removed from the family,” Vishwanathan, who founded LifeTogether in the northeastern Czech town of Ostrava thirteen years ago, related to me in private after the meeting. “They feel they have failed. But it’s not their fault.”

“Czech Republic is number one in Europe,” he continues, “in terms of having the highest rate of forced removal of children from Romani families and placed in state-run institutions.”

Indeed, Human Rights Watch has found that the Czech Republic has the highest number of infants under the age of three forced into institutional care of all EU countries.

Vishwanathan’s organization works to help prevent such practices, which have been criticized by the European Roma Rights Center and Amnesty International, among other human rights watchdogs. LifeTogether provides many services for the Romani community, including legal aid, counseling as well as help for children who run away from state foster care institutions.

[Sri Kumar Vishwanathan]

To truly remediate the situation, however, a systemic overhaul is long overdue. In its Survey on Children in Alternative Care, Eurochild, a network of organizations and individuals working across Europe to improve the quality of life of children, outlines seven steps by which European governments could prevent forced removal of children from families in poverty. Eurochild states:

EU member states should invest more in moving away from a child care system based on large institutions and move towards the provision of a range of integrated, family-based and community-based services.

Another Eurochild recommendation suggests that “the involvement of children, young people and their families is crucial, both in the decision- making processes affecting them directly and in the development of alternative care policies and services. They should therefore be empowered to participate in all stages of the care process and the EU should encourage the development of peer led groups of children, young people and parents with experience of care.”

The European Roma Rights Center identifies the role of the social worker as key in addressing systemic discrimination, as social workers are those who determine whether a family is “definitively incapable of caring for a child.” This decision is often driven by preconceived conceptions and a social worker’s view of the Romani community. The Bratinka Report, a study discussed in the ERRC document, found this to be the case:

This report found that 38% of social workers felt that the main obstacle to better relationships were the “unsavoury characteristics of the Roma”, that the Romani minority should attempt to adapt to the majority, that affirmative action programmes for the Roma were a waste of money and their influence negligible, and that it would be good to strike hard at Romany criminality and disregard for generally accepted norms. Forty-two percent of social workers felt that pro-active programmes for the Roma were an unfair privilege for one group of citizens. The ramifications of these perceptions may indeed correlate with the disproportionate representation of Roma children in institutions and necessarily question whether Romani families are given a just assessment of their rightful capacity to raise their own children.

Because social workers’ prejudices can ultimately lead to the break-up of a family, it is crucial that, as the organization Eurochild asserts, “all professionals working with and for children, including those in the education, health care, child protection and social work sectors, need high quality on-going training and supervision.”

Furthermore, Eurochild advocates that risks of social exclusion associated with poverty must be reduced:

The fight against child poverty must remain a key political priority of the EU. Social inequality denies children equal access to services and perpetuates the cycle of poverty. A strong political framework is required at EU level to ensure all member states put in place the necessary structural reforms to ensure all families have access to a minimum income and adequate services.

This year happens to be the EU Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, and in that regard, the Czech Republic has far to go. Considering the critical situation of the Romani population living in poverty, it is an abomination that the newly elected Czech government plans to cut social spending rather than invest in uplifting marginalized communities so they can live fearless, dignified lives.

“That’s very big of you. You are noble people,” Vishwanathan responds to one mother’s offer to forgo her chance to move into the apartment offered by LifeTogether before the meeting with the families concludes. The mother wants to give a preference to a family in danger of having its children removed by the state. She says, “There are nineteen families and eighteen apartments. Of course I will give a family that needs it more a chance first. We, who have kids, know how it is.”

Fortunately, following the eviction from an already long-neglected building for the poor, she and her children will be able to stay at her aunt’s for now.

This week, the Czech Republic is officially taking over the rotating presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, an international initiative whose goal is to improve the living conditions of the Roma across Europe.

The initiative brings together the governments of twelve European countries along with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations “to accelerate progress toward improving the welfare of Roma.“ The parnter organizations include the World Bank, the Open Society Institute, the United Nations Development Program, the the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Council of Europe, European Roma Information Office, and the European Roma Rights Centre.

According to the Decade of Roma Inclusion website, “the Decade focuses on the priority areas of education, employment, health, and housing, and commits governments to take into account the other core issues of poverty, discrimination, and gender mainstreaming.“

Now midway through the project, the reactions among Roma activists and community members vary, but veer on the side of skepticism.

Today I spoke to Ivan Veselý, head of the Dženo Association and member of the Decade of Roma Inclusion steering committee. Mr. Veselý has been with the intiative since its planning phase and has been so invested in the Decade that he calls the initiative “his child.“

“The initial aim of the Decade was two-fold,“ says Mr. Veselý. “One goal was to demand that member governments change their policies toward the Roma minority. The second major goal was to jumpstart a Roma rights movement across Europe.“

When asked about the effectiveness of the the Decade, he curses, expressing deep disappointment. He feels that the intiative was implemented without the necessary preliminary capacity building and that the efforts towards Roma inclusion are mostly conferences, declarations, reports, and more words; not enough action.

The goals for each country that is part of the Decade have been outlined, measurable indicators set, but, so far, there are few results.

“The main problem,“ says Mr. Veselý, “ is that no money has been allocated by the Czech government to achieve the Decade’s aims.“

During Czech Republic’s presidency, the priorities are: inclusive education (contrary to the current practice of unjustly segragating large numbers of Romany children in schools for the mentally handicapped); children’s living situations and their rights; the empowerment of Romany women; the implementation of local-level integration policies; and improving the image of Roma in the media.

The action plan for the Czech Republic comprises objectives such as providing Romany students equal access to pre-school as well as higher education; training educators in multicultural teaching methods; preventing residential segregation; increasing access of low-income Roma families to affordable housing; and boosting the employability and employment rates of the Roma through training, incentives and investment aimed at the creation of Roma-run small business enterprises.

What many, including Mr. Veselý, would like to see and have been advocating is a systemic change which begins with a firm, sustained, long-term committment on the part of the government. Such committment must take the form of allocation of a sufficient amount of money, so that the carefully crafted action plan can be implemented in all key sectors and throughout all regions.

About four hundred miles east of Prague, in the neighboring country of Slovakia, which separated peacefully from the Czech Republic not so long ago, lie the two communities profiled in the documentary “In a Cage” by the Roma Press Agency.

According to the Czech press agency Mlada Fronta, Slovakia has more than 800 Romani settlements, set apart from the majority community. The count is approximately 700, according to the Slovak daily Sme.sk.

[Chmiňanské Jakubovany, Eastern Slovakia. Photo credit: Lukáš Houdek]

These settlements usually have very high unemployment rates (some even close to 100%) and lack basic services such as running water, sewers, electricity, gas or garbage collection.

The settlements featured in the 2006 documentary “In a Cage” are the village of Rankovce, near the city of Kosice, and the community of Podskalka.

[Chmiňanské Jakubovany, Eastern Slovakia. Photo credit: Lukáš Houdek]

What impressed me was that despite the isolation, lack of opportunities and the deep poverty which the residents experience, they have found ways to preserve their dignity, to establish self-governance and daily routines, and to focus on hope for the future, especially when it comes to education for the young generation.

The documentary’s director-producer is Kristína Magdolenová, a human rights journalist and editor-in-chief at the Roma Press Agency. Her aim is to open doors and to break down barriers of prejudice between the majority population and the Roma, but to also sound an alarm about the dire situation of the Roma living in segregation. Magdolenová says:

“Our aim was to open the door to the world of the Roma. To show them such as the majority doesn’t know them, through their daily problems, joys and cares. To show their real face without prejudice, without fear from their otherness, without misgivings. To show that Slovak society plays with the Roma community, always pushes them further to the edge in this overly hazardous game. A game with human potential, a game which can also be turned against themselves. The film wants to point out that we’re nearing the midnight hour and that we need to stop playing this hazardous game.”

The Czech Republic, where I will be on assignment for my fellowship, also has serious issues with housing segregation in its approximately three hundred “excluded locations,” as Czech ghettos are also termed. But more about that in another post.

The excellent short documentary “In a Cage” about isolated Roma communities can be seen here: In a Cage.

When I announced to my Czech father that this summer I am coming to the Czech Republic, where he lives and where I grew up, to help advocate for Roma rights as an Advocacy Project fellow, he asked: “Will you be going out into ‘the field’?”

I replied that I most likely will and that I hope to do so, although I will surely be spending quite a bit of my time in the Prague office of Dženo Association, the Roma press agency I will be working for. (The truth is, of course, I don’t know yet, because I have yet to start.)

My father’s next response was: “Well, I can take you out to the field. I know some activists who can take you around. Then you’ll really see how those people are.”

The tone of his voice implied a sentiment I’ve heard from my fellow Czechs too many times to count: there is nothing that can be done unless the “unruly,” “problematic” Roma minority assimilates into the white Czech majority population. The commonly held belief is that most Roma people live in ghettos (and yes, housing segregation is a real issue); that they are “unconforming,” rowdy, lazy people prone to a life of crime, poverty and misery. But these stereotypes must be challenged and questioned.

[government-funded anti-racism campaign poster: "together against racism"]

Just today, Amnesty International UK released a report, which condemns the breaches of the human rights of the European Roma. As the German press agency Deutsche Welle states:

“The report identifies systemic discrimination against Roma communities in several European countries: substandard schools for Roma children in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, forced evictions in Italy, Serbia and Macedonia, and assaults and murders of Roma in Hungary.”

The list of barriers the Roma face across Europe is overwhelmingly long. The issues are outlined well by the Hungary-based European Roma Rights Centre, an international public interest law organization working to combat anti-Romani racism and human rights abuse of Roma. The issues are:

- increasing racially-motivated violence, often lacking adequate prosecution
- rising extremism, driven in large part by extremist political parties and politicians who “have sharpened their anti-Romani rhetoric and actions, creating a climate in which rights violations are more likely to occur with impunity.”
- discrimination in access to health care and social assistance
- coercive sterilization of Romani women
- widespread residential segregation
- evictions due to gentrification and a lack of affordable housing
- lack of coordinated response to discrimination from governmental bodies

All of the above are symptoms and manifestations of institutional racism, prevalent all across Europe, and strongly present and visible in the Czech Republic.

My goal as an AP fellow is to help inform international audiences about these issues and to help illuminate not only best practices combating these barriers, but also the resilience, resourcefulness and strength of the Roma people and their allies as they work to create a more equitable society.

And as for battling the prejudice that surfaces in my interactions with the majority population in the Czech Republic, including my family members, I will see. I can’t remain silent, but I may have to find a way to make brief, strong statements and conserve my energy, which instead of hitting against wall after wall, would be much better spent on directly supporting the advocacy work of the press agency I will be with.