Racism: denial and acknowledgement

05 December 2000

Houses in the Romani settlement in Mitrovica, Kosovo, destroyed by ethnic Albanians in July 1999. The grafitti reads, “KLA” — Kosovo Liberation Army. Photo: ERRC

Roma Rights 4/2000 addresses "racism: denial and acknowledgement", and ERRC authors rose to the challenge of this difficult theme with the following contributions: Dimitrina Petrova introduces the issue with an article entitled "The Denial of Racism". Konstanty Gebert follows with an assessment of the state of racism in Europe, World War II to present. Peter Vermeersch describes the development of racist exclusion of Roma from political life in Hungary and Slovakia over the course of the 1990s. Robin Oakley presents UK experiences in fighting institutional racism and draws some conclusions for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Next, James Goldston describes new European legal mechanisms available to governments in the struggle against racism and racist discrimination. Laurent Jourdan describes the past abuses of the Yenish by Swiss authorities. Gioia Maiellano assesses the development of the terms "race" and "ethnicity" in international law and notes deficiencies in the practise of some Central and Eastern European Countries. ERRC advocacy efforts in the area of anti-discrimination and asylum follow. A Romani-language translation of The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is provided on page 82. The English language version of the text is available on the Internet at: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/d_icerd.htm.