Roma Equality, non-discrimination and racism

Speaker Michael O’Flaherty

Event (Più) Partecipazione, Inclusione e Uguaglianza

FRA Director, Michael O'Flaherty, spoke at the “(Più) Partecipazione, Inclusione e Uguaglianza” event about the challenges Roma and Travellers face in Europe. In his speech, he suggested steps to ensure full respect for their human rights. CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY.

Director General,

Dear Friends,

Thank you for the invitation to join you today. I welcome this initiative and I applaud the high focus you are giving to the critical issue of full respect for the human rights of Roma, Sinti, and Travellers. I welcome the adoption of the National Strategy 2021-2030. I appreciate the initiative of convening us here on the Campidoglio, the symbolic heart of governance, with a resonance for people everywhere.

Colleagues, after nearly eight years as director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights - FRA, I am convinced that the experience of Roma in our societies is one of the defining human rights issues of our time. The extent of exclusion and marginalisation of the EU’s 6 million-strong community of Roma women, men and children is a cause of great shame.

Several years ago, I was in a small village – not in Italy - where I was invited into a Roma lady’s home. It was a very poor house, some broken windows, desperately in need of paint. There was no inside toilet, the yard was scruffy, overgrown and all her neighbours were Roma. These Roma were, in a sense, pushed to that part of the village by the local community. What I remember most of all is the fact that this woman kept apologising to me. She apologised for the fact that the house was not very presentable, she apologised that her children were not well dressed, she apologised that she didn’t have anything to offer us by way of food or drink. She kept apologising and I got very angry. Not with her. I got angry that she should apologise to me. We, non-Roma, should be apologising to her, because it’s we, through our attitudes and our prejudice and our discrimination, that have shoved that woman to the edge of our society.

The evidence for our failure is overwhelming and sadly reinforced by my Agency’s research.

In our survey work with Roma and Travellers across the EU, one in four Roma reports being discriminated against. They report the discrimination in education, access to work, the workplace, engagement with the State, housing, healthcare and elsewhere. Patterns of attacks and harassment are equally disturbing. Our data indicates that the average of Roma people who have experienced hate-motivated harassment is 20%, with the figure for Italy being twice this. Violence against Roma is also high in Italy: one in ten Roma have experience racially motivated physical violence within the past year: five times the EU average.

Such acts of violence and discrimination are extremely underreported to the authorities. Underreporting is compounded by low levels of awareness of rights, as well as how and where to complain. On average, only half of Roma respondents to our surveys have heard of avenues of redress, such an equality body, national human rights institution, or ombudsperson. Many Roma also distrust the police, with 14% of survey respondents in Ireland believing that the most recent stop by police was carried out because they are an Irish Traveller.

It will come as no surprise that Roma fare very badly in terms of respect for their socio-economic outcomes. As our surveys show, here in Italy, almost every Roma – 98%- is at risk of poverty, with the EU average not far behind at 83%.

Any analysis of the human rights situation of Roma requires reference to the extent of antigypsyism in our societies. The share of people not wanting Roma as neighbours is disturbingly high – especially here in Italy - at 65% in 2018. It is also commonplace to smear the entire Roma community with the unacceptable acts of individuals – such as labelling everyone a criminal because of the acts of a few. These problems of ‘othering’ are widespread and entrenched. And we see that they are exacerbated in moments of social unease, such as today. I recall the experience of a Ukrainian Roma child that colleagues of mine encountered in March of last year on her arrival into the EU. She was refused access to a bus because the people onboard did not want Roma on the bus. This same child had difficulty finding somewhere to sleep that night, again because people did not want to share their space with her.

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