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The People of Slovakia’s Lunik IX Slum

lunik IXAn uncomfortable reality is that there are many children in the world who do not have essentials such as food, water, electricity and a safe, sheltered home. This is the reality for the people living in Lunik IX in Slovakia.

Roma People in Lunik IX

There a several reasons why Lunik IX is an area that is neglected and overlooked by Slovakia. One is due to the large population of Roma people, a minority group unfairly discriminated against and long labeled as a reason for many problems in the country. The slum mostly consists of Roma people who lack the very things they need to rise out of poverty. The Roma population’s 97% unemployment rate is the biggest reason for poverty in the area. Many try to get jobs but are denied them purely based on their ethnicity.

This, as a result, heavily impacts children in Lunik IX. Their parents cannot provide for them, forcing them to live in a rundown area where there is little to no electricity and basic needs go unfulfilled. There is also little opportunity for them to break the cycle of poverty. All these issues have made the area a seemingly hopeless place for many of the children who live there.

Recreational Developments in Lunik IX

In the past few years, significant progress has been made in Lunik IX to improve living conditions for people. For one, there have been a lot of projects built purely for the purpose of giving children safe spaces to play in instead of playing in garbage and rubble. A gym, ping pong tables, a playground and a park have all been built, giving the residents safe recreational spaces. While these seem like small solutions to big problems, these spaces allow kids to be kids. The children of Lunik IX do not live typical childhoods and these projects allow them to engage in children’s play activities.

Other Key Developments in Lunik IX

Three important new developments in the area are the implementation of regular garbage disposal, the establishment of clean drinking water facilities and new construction projects. Lunik IX has been long plagued with poorly disposed of trash and a regular garbage disposal system eliminates this problem entirely. This alone can improve the health of people tenfold, as many of the diseases they face arise from unsanitary living conditions.

Clean drinking water is a necessity and it is something that Lunik IX lacks. There are plans for the reconstruction of water pipes with a prepaid system, which will ensure nobody accumulates debt from water payments.

Newer construction efforts are on track to solve the decay of many buildings and the lack of employment opportunities. Many of the newer buildings can be worked by residents, allowing them to have jobs they have previously been denied based on ethnicity.

Despite Lunik IX’s reputation as on of Europe’s worst slums, efforts are being made to change this and improve living conditions for the people.

– Remy Desai-Patel
Photo: Flickr

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Strategies to Combat Poverty in Romania

Combat Poverty in RomaniaIn an effort to combat the nation’s longstanding battle with poverty, the Romanian Government passed 47 measures in 2015/16 to combat poverty in Romania through to 2020.

Poverty in Romania

At the time these measures passed into law, 40.2% of Romanian people were at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Furthermore, absolute poverty in Romania increased from 23.4% in 2008 to 27.7% in 2012. Low educational attainment, intergenerational transmission of poverty and lack of inter-regional mobility all contribute to the integral causes of poverty in Romania.

However, the Romanian government set a substantial and significant new precedent on how the nation combats poverty by adopting The National Strategy and Strategic Action Plan on Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction for 2015-2020. These measures hope to reduce the many causes of poverty in Romania.

Key Measures:

  • Increasing employment rate through labor market activation programs
  • Increasing financial support for low-income individuals
  • Improving social inclusion of marginalized communities
  • Improving the functionality of social services
  • Reducing school drop-out rates
  • Scaling-up of national health programs
  • Integrating social assistance benefits with social services, employment services and other public services.

These measures were an encouraging shift in political focus that revolved around social benefits and a more community-based and integrated approach that generated widespread support. The World Bank supports these measures, commenting that these measures will strongly contribute to narrowing poverty gaps in the country.

Impact of Poverty Reduction Strategy

Since the adoption of these measures, monthly income per person increased by 10% between 2016 and 2017 and by 16% between 2017 and 2018, in part due to the increases in public-sector wages and improved minimum wages and tax cuts. As a result, poverty rates fell from 28.4% in 2014 to 15.8% in 2017.

Currently, the employment rate at 68.8% is approaching the EU 2020 target and is just below the EU average of 72.2%. Additionally, the unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the EU at 4.9%.

Implementation Delays Cause Concern

Although clear steps toward improving Romania’s struggle with poverty have emerged, these measures have received criticism as expectations have determined that many measures could have delayed or minimal results. These concerns were further exacerbated in 2017 when a change in government occurred. The political change delayed implementation and altered the original plan, putting full implementation in jeopardy.

In addition, more legislation is necessary to address the growing condition of the Roma minority group residing in Romania. A whole 78% of Roma are at risk of poverty compared to 35% for non-Roma citizens. Furthermore, 84% of Roma households do not have access to a water source, sewage or electricity. To successfully combat poverty in Romania, the Roma need to be prioritized.

Poverty Reduction Progress

While no single piece of legislation will be the end all be all to combat poverty in Romania, the anti-poverty measures passed in 2015/2016 have shown that a top-down, legislation-focused approach to fighting poverty can lead to progress, poverty reduction and improved social inclusion.

– Andrew Eckas
Photo: Flickr

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6 Facts about Girls’ Education in Romania

facts about girls' education in RomaniaRomania is a country settled in east-central Europe bordering the Black Sea. The country has a rigid education program that falls short in some areas of girls’ education, particularly for Roma girls who come from a minority making up about 10 percent of Romania’s population. While improvements are being made to the overall education of the country, some pupils are more neglected than others. These six facts about girls’ education in Romania shed some light on the achievements and shortfalls of the Romanian education system and what is being done to further improve girls’ education.

6 Facts About Girls’ Education in Romania

  1. There are more girls in pre-primary schools than boys. As of 2016, 75.26 percent of Romanian girls were enrolled in pre-primary school—the equivalent of kindergarten—while only 74.52 percent of boys were enrolled.
  2. Female literacy rates are on the rise. In 1992, 94.98 percent of the Romanian female population older than 15 were literate. As of 2018, that percentage stood at 98.6.
  3. Half of the women in rural Romania don’t finish secondary school. Half of the female population living in rural areas of Romania don’t manage to finish secondary school according to Tatiana Proscuryakova, World Bank’s Country Manager for Romania and Hungary.
  4. Roma women often don’t have the same opportunities as other women in Romania. One of the largest minority groups in Romania is the Roma people. Roma girls are disproportionately impacted by poverty conditions and continue to face societal discrimination. On average, Roma girls leave school at age 10 so that they can contribute to the household in some way.
  5. Female unemployment rates are increasing. As of 2019, only 45.17 percent of Romanian women are part of the workforce. This number dropped from 62.31 percent in 1992 and is likely a direct result of the struggle among many women to complete a proper education. Without an education, many women find themselves without the skills necessary to make themselves a valuable member of the workforce.
  6. Save the Children is working to fix the gap in Roma girls’ education. The American nonprofit, known for its work in helping children around the world, launched a preparedness program in the summer of 2016 for children in Romania. The goal of this program is to help Roma children be better equipped for pre-primary school, both academically and socially.

Romania has an impressive literacy rate among both men and women but has seen a dramatic drop in the number of women in the workforce. Most Romanian women are able to receive an education, but Roma girls seem to be subject to a prejudiced struggle. While the number of girls in the workforce is declining, education is increasing and the hope of overall improvement of girls’ education and the consequent life opportunities is bright.

– Amanda Gibson
Photo: Flickr

 

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Poverty Among the Romani in Albania

Poverty Among Romanians in Albania
Albania, a country located east of the heel of Italy and bordering a chunk of the Adriatic Sea, receives millions of Euros each year. However, Albania invests next to nothing, if even that, in the ghettos where a majority of the Romani population live. The result is a continuous cycle of poverty among the Romani in Albania.

Estimates determine that Romani people migrated from Northern India to Eastern Europe in the 1400s. Upon arriving, Eastern Europeans discriminated against the Romani people due to their nomadic lifestyles. Romani people lived in tribes and worked as craftsmen. Being further developed when it came to technology, the Eastern Europeans used this to justify why they treated the Romani as “less than” or “untouchables.” In Albania, this treatment is still present today.

A Large Population

Although no one seems to have accurate data of how many Romani people live in Albania, the majority of sources seem to estimate somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000. Of this amount, 80 percent of the Romani in Albania have no job and live in extreme poverty. While this is a vast percentile, the Albanian government is still not fully addressing the issue of poverty among the Romani in Albania. For instance, the country’s social services such as welfare and economic aid make it difficult, sometimes impossible, for the Romani people to access them. Because most Romani people in Albania do not register at their local municipality, the government uses this to justify them as ineligible for the social services. However, the reason Romani in Albania do not register at their local municipality is due to the discrimination they face. This causes them to live on unclaimed land, move frequently and/or bear children at home rather than in a hospital.

Issues of Education

In Albania, 52 percent of the Romani population has no education. Of the other 48 percent who do attend school, 14 percent complete elementary school, three percent complete secondary school and four percent graduate from a college or university. Because of the lack of education, many Romani are not eligible to access employment which further contributes to their poverty.

Romani children tend to not attend school for the following reasons:

  1. They have to work to help their family survive because the average monthly income of Romani households is 68 Euros. The Romani people make less than half the monthly income of non-Romani households living in the same neighborhoods.
  2. Some schools refuse to register Romani children because they do not have birth certificates. This is despite the fact that it is the law in Albania to accept all Romani students into public schools whether they have a birth certificate or not.
  3. Romani parents choose to keep their kids home from school due to their claim that the teachers discriminate against their children because of their ethnicity.

Temporary Work

Because many Romani people in Albania are unable to find a stable source of income, they often resort to small, temporary jobs in different trades such as construction and agriculture, and most of these are low pay. While the government does provide economic aid to the unemployed, very few Romani benefit from this aid, and if they do, they do not receive it for as long as they need it. On top of all of this, Romani people are continuously denied their rights to adequate housing and lack of access to clean drinking water, and often experience ill-treatment from local police for no reason other than being of Romani descent.

The ERRC

In 1996, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) emerged out of recognition of the discrimination Romani people face in multiple countries including Albania. It uses two methods to establish equal rights and opportunities for all Romani people:

  1. Strategic Litigation: In order to eliminate the discrimination against Romani people that prevents them from moving out of poverty, the ERRC fights whoever is implementing these discriminatory acts in court. It is able to do so in both domestic and international courts.
  2. Advocacy and Research: The ERRC believes that one of the best things anyone can do in order to help prevent poverty among Romanians in Albania as well as in other countries is to get the word out. One requires awareness and education of the issue in order for change to be possible.

An ERRC Victory

The ERRC completed its latest project in Albania on December 12, 2018. Due to discrimination, Romani citizens of Fushe Kruje, a city in Albania that has been home to a Romanian community since 1990, were suffering from lack of clean drinking water. While numerous Romani organizations took action to prevent this for the past 20 years, next to nothing has changed. The ERRC stepped in and went to court to fight the local municipality in Fushe Kruje for refusing to address the community’s limited access to clean water. The ERRC won the case, and the court declared that the local municipality would have to fix this issue within 30 days or receive a fine.

The ERRC envisions a world in which Romani people and non-Romani people in Albania are able to work together to challenge the racism that exists. By doing so, poverty among the Romani in Albania will end, thus, allowing them to receive access to proper education, steady employment, and ultimately, better healthier lives.

– Emily Turner
Photo: Flickr

 

 

Girls’ Education in Bulgaria Requires Much Improvement

Girls’ Education in Bulgaria
Girls’ education in Bulgaria is severely lacking in Roma communities, in part due to poor socioeconomic conditions and also as a result of the communities’ social norms. Many Roma children live below the poverty line which creates barriers to achievements in education, even barring some children from finishing primary school.

The Current Situation in Bulgaria

Often families cannot keep up with the costs of schooling. Boys will leave school for work to support the family and girls will stay home to care for children and chores. Women also abandon education because of early marriage or pregnancy.

The majority of the annual 45,000 student dropouts in Bulgaria are of Roma ethnicity. An estimated 130,000 children do not attend school in Bulgaria—most of them are Roma—and 22 percent of the Roma population in the Bulgarian area are illiterate, with only nine percent having reached a secondary education.

Why Roma Women Get Left Behind

In the past, the Roma marriage age was lower (15-16 for girls and 17-18 for boys). However, a small but increasing trend in higher-aged marriages among the young Roma community members has begun to take hold. Now the average marriable age is 17 years for women and 18.9 for men.

The older women get married, the longer they can stay in the education system and finish primary school. Continuing school after marriage for women is almost unheard of as the traditional role of being a committed wife and mother would make further education strenuous.

Certain actions, like dropping out of school and marrying young, are seen by officials in Bulgaria as typical Roma behavior. There has been a reoccurring pattern of Roma girls ending their education around fifth grade and the municipalities do not exercise the statutes that prevent early dropouts.

According to article 36, paragraph 1 of the of the Bulgarian National Education Act, the Municipal Councils are expected to “ensure compulsory school education of children up to the age of 16,” however there is little done to enforce this. Thus, Roma girls in Bulgaria are still leaving school at an early age. There is very little action from social workers, as they see school dropout and young marriages as the cultural Roma norm.

Improving Girls’ Education in Bulgaria

A report from UNICEF suggests strategies that could help alleviate some of the socioeconomic problems surrounding girls’ education in Bulgaria, recommending ways of mitigating the costs of education through financial assistance that will provide free programs and food at schools. Other ways of alleviating high dropout rates are reaching out to communities in isolated areas and either building a school in those places or providing free transport to other campuses.

While financial issues are prominent, social discrimination is another main contribution to dropout rates. UNICEF’s report also provides strategies that may ease the discrimination against and segregation of Roma citizens: providing national and local monitoring to ensure each child is included and progressing through the educational system. Investing in early education could also provide an opportunity for education to people who otherwise would not have had the chance.

The trending increase in marrying age is a good sign, but unless Bulgarian officials come forward to enforce primary education for all, the drop out rate will continue to disproportionately affect young Roma women. With further effort, opportunities to better girls’ education in Bulgaria, especially among Roma communities, will continue to arise.

-David Daniels
Photo: Flickr

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Five of the Most Predominant Stateless Groups in the World Today

stateless groups
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the internationally recognized legal definition of a stateless person is “a person who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law.” A person or a group of people with the status of “stateless” usually means they are not allowed to get an education at school, see a doctor, get a job or have access to other basic human rights within a nation.

Some people are born stateless; other groups become stateless if their government does not establish them as nationals that have representation under state law.

Here is a list of five currently stateless groups in the world:

 

1. The Rohingya

The Rohingya are a group of Muslims of South Asian descent that populate western Myanmar and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s government pushed many Rohingya out of Myanmar, which is how they ended up in Bangladesh and other nearby regions. Myanmar, dominantly Buddhist, doesn’t want to accept this ethnic group into their nation. As a result, many Rohingya suffer from intense discrimination, hatred and unkind deaths. With nowhere and no one to support them, the Rohingya are completely dependent on foreign aid.

 

2. The Roma

While the exact origin of Roma is unknown, it is certain that this group of people arrived in Europe prior to the ninth century. Historically, many Roma were forced into slavery and sentenced to death throughout the medieval era for being “heathens.” They, alongside the Jews, were persecuted and forced into labor camps during World War II. Today, millions of Roma live in isolated slums without running water or electricity. There is a great health disparity among the population, but governments have kept them at the brink of death without offering help.

 

3. The Nubians

The Nubians, originally from Sudan, were brought to Kenya over 150 years ago when the British government asked them to fight in the colonial army; since then, they haven’t been able to return home. Today, Kenya will not grant Nubians basic citizenship rights so this group lives in one of the largest slums on Earth despite trying to receive title rights to land and seeking solutions to their disparity.

 

4. The Bidoon

In the state of Kuwait, the Bidoon is one of the stateless groups attempting to break free from the status of “illegal residents.” The Bidoon are descendants of the Bedouin people, a desert-dwelling Arabian ethnic group. They have tried and failed dozens of times to gain official recognition in Kuwait; instead of citizenship, they are told to seek residency elsewhere.

 

5. The Yao

The Yao is one of many Thailand hill tribes that don’t have a Thai citizenship. This means they can’t vote, buy land or seek legal employment. The Thai government has previously granted temporary citizenship to a select few, but this is after they go through a strenuous process to prove they should be granted a pass.

These five stateless groups — Rohingya, Roma, Nubians, Bidoon and Yao — are just a select few from an extensive list. In total, there are more than 10 million people that are denied a nationality; however, the UNHCR made an announcement that they hope to end statelessness by 2024. On their website, viewers can sign the #IBelong campaign in order to show support. If successful, this will not only grant millions of men, women and children a nationality, but it will also grant increased access to clean food and water, healthcare, jobs, education and so much more.

– Caysi Simpson

Photo: Flickr

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UN Reinventing the Approach to European Roma Poverty

UN Reinventing the Approach to European Roma Poverty-TBP
The Roma people are a large ethnic minority living in Europe whose population totals to 10 to 12 million people. Despite the existence of laws aimed at protecting this group of people from discrimination, the Romas experience harsh prejudices. The lack of opportunities to available to them often keeps them below the poverty line. They have low literacy rates, little access to healthcare centers and high rates of hunger.

The countries with the highest percentage of Roma communities are Macedonia, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria. They make up between 7 and 10 percent of the populations of these countries.

Roma people suffer from many health issues, but their access to health insurance is limited. Their cause is further hurt by the high price of healthcare. More than half of Roma households cannot afford prescriptions and about 20 percent say that they have had overnight stays in health centers. (Non-Roma people ranked at 1/3 and about 12 percent, respectively.) Vaccination rates are also low among the Roma, while births outside the hospital are high.

Education is another area where there is a significant lack of support and progress. Because of child marriages, many young girls are taken out of school before they are able to finish. In most of Central and Eastern Europe, about 50 percent of the Roma have, at the very least, a lower secondary education than their non-Roma counterparts. Schools are often ethnically segregated.

The United Nations had a mission to help lower Roma poverty and improve their living conditions. In 2007, the UN opened centers to help the Roma people receive affordable and accessible healthcare and proper education. However, the programs were highly inefficient and slow moving and accomplished little. That is why the UN is out to reinvent the Roma outreach.

After experimenting with three prospective methods in Macedonia to engage the Roma people and to improve their situation, the UN settled on the Roma Centre of the Future.

Using Roma and non-Roma peoples, the centers work to help the Roma people access education, healthcare and other public services. This time, the centers have the skills, knowledge, tools and technology needed to run such an idea efficiently and effectively, with the goal being to reach as many Roma people as possible. The workers help people through complicated paperwork, direct them to opportunities like job trainings and provide useful community programs. There is also a special focus on the elderly, a concentration that did not exist in the earlier programs.

The program is already seeing success. Within the first five months the center reached 820 people, which was more than the old centers used to help in a year! This new, dedicated focus on reaching the needs of the people appears to be working, as the Roma people are seeing the positive effects the centers have on the community and are thus going to these centers for help.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: EC Europa, UNDP 1, UNDP 2, New Int
Photo: UNDP

Poverty in Istanbul

poverty_in_Istanbul
In the sprawling metropolis of Istanbul, which over 14 million people call home, there is a sense of progress and modernity. The city, the largest in Turkey, sits at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and claims thousands of years of history.

Istanbul is one of the more diverse cities in Turkey. It is home to not only Turks, but also Kurds, the Romani people and immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and Africa. While the tourist and central areas seem modern, safe and progressive, there is another side of the city.

Poverty in Istanbul is pocketed. About an hour bus ride out of the central city, there are two neighborhoods that are some of Istanbul’s poorest and most violent: Gazi Mahallesi and Karayollari. The first, Gazi Mahallesi, is a multiethnic neighborhood. The neighborhood sports anti-government vandalism and leftover destruction from riots by anarchist, Kurdish and leftist groups that reside there.

Karayollari, separated from Gazi Mahallesi by a highway overpass, is a primarily Kurdish neighborhood. Many of the Kurds who call the neighborhood home have been displaced by the violence in southeastern Turkey, where Turkey’s Kurds are the most populous. Karayollari seems to be stuck in a cycle of violence, encouraged by poverty and unemployment. Residents say the police no longer even venture near the neighborhood unless to break up riots.

Because of rapid and unplanned migration to the city, 70 percent of housing in Istanbul was built in 30 years. At first, housing was built wherever land could be found. These settlements are Istanbul’s version of shantytowns or squatter towns and are called gacekondu. The gacekondu originally were accepted by the city because they passed the costs of urbanization from the government to the migrants. The gecekondus were the homes of the poorest migrants who found work in the industrial parts of Istanbul.

The make-shift neighborhoods were accepted as a solution to urbanization through 1980s, but are now being razed in an attempt modernize the city. Forced evictions have occurred, putting already poor families into the streets of sometimes violent, dangerous parts of Istanbul. Early last year, a group of 30 Roma families, previously evicted from their homes, was in danger of being forcibly evicted again, this time from their makeshift shack camp. The group included children and elderly persons. Amnesty International reported that the group was “living in conditions of extreme poverty since their forced eviction” and was “without access to…electricity, clean water and basic sanitation.”

Overall poverty in Turkey is a diminishing problem. Over the last ten years, the number of people living on less than $4.30 per day decreased from 20 million to 1.7 million. In Istanbul, the percent of people living in poverty has decreased 2.2 percent over the last eight years. The government claims that this reduction is due to government support programs to poorer citizens.

There is some contest as the whether the government’s attitude towards poverty and the poor can really lead to effective policy. Dr. Ebru Soytemel, of the Oxford Program for the Future of Cities, says that the “current government regards poverty as a temporary, individual problem that can be fixed, not a structural problem.They say that your religion or your family should provide you with help.”

Distribution of poverty is a problem for Turkey. While overall inequality has diminished, the distribution of poverty is a stark reminder of the discrepancies among living standards within the country. When looking at a map of regional poverty rates in Turkey, eastern regions, where most of Turkey’s ethnic minority groups live, are severely disadvantaged. Istanbul, which is the most western region of Turkey, is the most well off. Istanbul is a microcosm of this map: minority neighborhoods are generally far worse off than primarily Turkish neighborhoods.

– Caitlin Huber

Sources: Oxford, Today’s Zaman, Daily Sabah, Hurriyet Daily News Non-Descrimination Time Pulitzer Center LSE Cities
Photo: Telegraph U.K.

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Empowering Minority Groups in Albania

minority_groups_in_albania
Since the fall of socialism in 1991, Albania has made great strides in establishing itself as an economic and political power in Europe. The country has joined the United Nations, NATO, World Trade Organization and the Council of Europe. It is poised to join the European Union.

One of the factors holding the country back has been the exclusion of its minorities, primarily the Roma and Egyptians. This exclusion has left 75 percent of Roma and 70 percent of Egyptians categorized as very poor, compared to the 28.8 percent of Albanians with the same rating.

This socioeconomic status is due largely to of a lack of education, employment and basic infrastructure.  This has led many members of these groups to seek wages in the informal labor market, which includes prostitution, women and child trafficking and drug trafficking.

While the government has claimed to include these minority groups in Albania, Egyptians have not been given minority status. The government claims they have not met the criteria necessary. Egyptians must share the same language (other than Albanian), have documentation to prove its distinct ethnic origin or national identity and have distinct customs and traditions or a link to a kinship state outside of the country.

However, the Roma have met these criteria, and, as of 2005, the Albanian government has signed up for the Decade of Roma, a World Bank initiative designed to help in four key areas: education, employment, health and housing and gender and non-discrimination. To date however, the results are not very encouraging, as the number of Roma still labeled as very poor continues to rise.

Against this very bleak picture, several rays of hope have begun to shine on the Roma and Egyptian communities from several organizations. One of these organizations is the United Nations Development Plan, implemented by the Ministry of Social Welfare and funded by the European Union.

These organizations have constructed a project designed to promote social inclusion of Roma and Egyptians through vocational training to increase their employability and strengthen artisan and entrepreneurship skills, especially for women and girls.

The training entailed learning how to cultivate medicinal plants. It was a week-long program where participants were trained how to cultivate, collect and dry medicinal plants. They also learned how to start a business. Additionally, women who owned pieces of land were given sage seeds to help get them started.

Within six months, several of the women who took the course were entrepreneurs employing up to three other women in their businesses. The UNDP recruited sage specialists to assist farmers throughout the process and help them in timing their sales and marketing their product.

Luan Ahmetaj, Director of the Medicinal Plant Institute in Tirana, Albania said, “What makes this intervention unique is the involvement of women in business dominated and run by men. This contributes in empowering those communities.”

There is a huge potential for Albanian medicinal plants. According to the U.S. Agricultural Department, 57 percent of sage imports into the U.S. come from Albania. There are close to 300 members of Roma and Egyptian communities in the regions of Berat, Korca and Vlora that are now benefiting from the initiative, almost half of them women.

Another aspect of this program has been the support of interventions into infrastructure identified by Roma and Egyptian Community Councils, such as kindergartens, road rehabilitations and other interventions. These programs also support the Government of Albania in its efforts to achieve the objectives set forth in the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005 – 2015. It also promotes respect for human rights and appreciation for cultural diversity, as prerequisites for the country’s EU accession.

– Frederick Wood

Sources: Minority Rights 1, Minority Rights 2, UNDP, UN Albania, ERRC
Photo: Flickr

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Romanian Roma Children

romanian_roma_children
Often referred to as travellers or gypsies, the Romani or Roma, people constitute one of the largest minority groups in Romania. However, they are not welcomed. Originating from India, Roma people are vastly discriminated against and face a multitude of disadvantages in education, health, living conditions and job opportunities.

Approximately 90 percent of Roma people live below the poverty line, while almost 33 percent are unemployed. Unfortunately, there has been a purposeful exclusion of the Roma population from mainstream society.

Roma children continually face violations of their basic human rights all across Europe. Additionally, a Roma child is three times more likely to be born into poverty than all other Romanian children.

Health issues that often occur from poor nutrition in early childhood have been exacerbated by the lack of access to treatment and medical clinics. Marginalization and extreme poverty have also hindered the children’s ability to gain equal access to services, including schooling.

Families are not only unable to send children to school due to financial reasons, but also because parents cannot afford clothes or school supplies. There is also growing concern for the stigma and violence the Roma children may endure. For the small percentage of Roma children that do attend school, they face extreme prejudice and segregation. Much of the disapproval stems from the perception that all Roma people are thieves and crooks.

Children and young people make up a large portion of the Roma population, yet their voices are rarely heard. Many European governments overlook the existing policies and legislation that exist to protect minority populations, further reducing their participation in society.

While the Roma in Romania experience discrimination from the people around them, the Roma children bear the greatest burden.

– Leeda Jewayni

Sources: Roma Children, CNN, World Bank
Photo: Caritas