By Connie Hong
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia —  Amnesty International is urging the Slovak government to address the issue of segregation that plagues the country’s schools and classrooms.  Currently, thousands of Romani children living in Slovakia are forced to learn in classrooms separated from their Slovakian peers.  Although the organization has urged the government for the past five years to provide reform to the country’s educational system, nothing has changed.

Romani students are routinely picked out from their classes and put into either mainstream Roma-only schools, or in separate classrooms within mainstream Slovakia schools.  The children are disproportionately placed in learning institutions that cater mainly to children with “mild mental disabilities.”

The segregated schools and classrooms teach at a substandard level compared to the education received in mainstream Slovakian schools.  As Jezerca Tigani, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asian Program, said, “Segregation in Slovakia’s schools is a huge obstacle for Romani children to access quality education.”  The consequences that this forced segregation has on the Romani students are enormous; the students are exposed to a system that enforces a lifetime of discrimination and poverty.

Romani students have reported that they have experienced racist bullying and other abuses by their non-Roma peers in mainstream Slovak schools as well as discriminatory treatment by their teachers.  Some students have reported that their teachers have physically abused them in the classroom setting.  Sometimes these children are literally locked inside their separate classrooms or buildings to keep them from interacting with non-Roma students.

“Besides violating their right to a discrimination-free education, in the longer term it deprives them of a wide range of other human rights, including the right to health, work and freedom of expression.  Such systemic human rights violations exclude Roma from full participation in Slovak society and lock them into a cycle of poverty and marginalization,” Tigani added.

Despite the pressures it has received from organizations like Amnesty International, very little has been done by the Slovak government to address the problems of their segregated school system.  The poor academic conditions that Romani children endure are still prevalent even after a new Schools Act passed in 2008 banning segregation and after the government pledged on paper to end ethnic discrimination in schools in August 2010.

A new Slovak government came into power in March 2012.  Instead of working to eliminate segregation, it has alarmingly discarded even those limited references to reform made by the previous government and adopted a program that contains an initiative to set up segregated boarding schools for children from “marginalized communities.”

Young students like Renata understand the need to have a desegregated school system.  While still in a “mixed” classroom with non-Roma students, her parents fear that the school administration will soon transfer her to a separate classroom just like her other siblings.  In a recent conversation with Amnesty International, Renata expressed concern about transferring, stating that she likes her school and classmates.

“If I would have to go to a Roma-only class, then I do not want to stay in Francisciho school.  I don’t want to go to a Roma-only class [where] we would be speaking only Romani, not Slovak.  I would not have non-Roma friends.  I want to continue in my class.  It is important to have non-Roma friends and grow up together.”

 

For further information, please see:

Amnesty International — A class apart — Slovakia’s segregation of Romani students — 31 August 2012

Romedia Foundation — Segregation of Roma in Czech and Slovak schools must end, says UK charity — 21 August 2012

Amnesty International — End the segregation of Romani children in Slovakia’s schools — 29 June 2011

Fight Discrimination — Slovak government urged to end segregation for Romani children — 2 September 2010

Equality — From Segregation to Inclusion — August 2009