Human Rights Organisations Welcome Call on Governments to End Housing Crisis of Roma in Europe

29 October 2007

Serial Abuses in Need of Rigorous Response

Budapest, Geneva: The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), the Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM), the Italian human rights organisation Osservazione, and the Slovak NGO Milan Simecka Foundation (MSF) welcome today the joint statement by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing urging governments to take positive steps to protect the housing rights of Roma in Europe. The Council of Europe/United Nations joint statement deplores the rise of forced evictions of Roma throughout Europe, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to social exclusion and marginalization. The statement also decries the impunity of public officials and others for violations of domestic and international human rights law. The full text of the joint statement is available at: The Joint Statement.

COHRE, the ERRC, GHM, MSF and Osservazione take the opportunity of the joint statement to call attention to some current issues which have given rise to statements of concern by international bodies and non-governmental organizations. These include: 

• During the summer months of 2007, the municipality of Rome, Italy, first threatened and then forcibly evicted over 1000 Roma from the city. The municipality of Bolzano, also in Italy, has for several years tolerated the fact of approximately 100 Roma who live on a toxic waste site in the city. In May 2006, the Italian government made a number of promises to the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers concerning remedying the extreme exclusion of Roma in Italy. These have not yet been acted upon;
• Officials in France and Ireland have recently undertaken to expel Romanian Roma from the country in very high-profile eviction actions. There are concerns that although Romanian citizens now are entitled to certain social goods as a result of Romania's accession to the European Union on 1 January 2007, in practice, where Roma from Romania are concerned, officials of other European Union Member States have sought to avoid realisation of these rights;
• In recent years, the French government has adopted draconian measures with respect to Travellers in France, giving rise to serial forced evictions, as well as to the threat of criminal penalty for Travellers unable to access limited halting sites;
• A recent report by the NGO Ecumenical Humanitarian Organisation (EHO) on the situation of Roma forcibly returned to Serbia by, in particular, Western European governments, especially Germany, notes that some of the persons concerned literally have no place to stay and had to sleep in the open air upon their arrival in Serbia. The dwellings in which returnees reside are frequently overcrowded and families with many members live in very small rooms, because the Roma concerned may have sold or otherwise given up housing before leaving Serbia in the first place. These aggravated housing conditions are compounded by widespread slum conditions throughout Serbia, and instances of forced evictions in recent years, particularly in Belgrade;
• In recent months, according to the organization Association of Roma Women for Our Children, 43 Roma were reportedly evicted forcibly in Timisoara, Romania. Timisoara authorities have also not yet managed to regulate the predominantly Romani neighborhood of Kuntz, such that the persons living there are not yet provided with clear documentation recognizing the legitimacy of their tenure, despite the fact that they have lived in the neighborhood since before the second world war. There has not been any satisfactory resolution of the situation of the approximately 110 Roma evicted in the town of Tulcea, forcefully evicted in October 2006, and made to move to inadequate housing outside the city limits or into mobile housing units located on a garbage dump. Forced evictions have also been recently reported in the capital Bucharest;
• Greece is currently failing to implement 2004 and 2006 findings by the European Committee of Social Rights that Greece's treatment of Roma in the field of housing violates 3 aspects of the European Social Charter. In June and September 2007, according to Greek Helsinki Monitor, 135 Roma families were forcibly evicted, some twice in a few days, in Athens, Patras and Halkida, evidently without the relevant procedural safeguards being respected. Hundreds of Roma families are threatened with similar evictions in Greater Athens, Patras, Crete and Rhodes. A number of Roma in Athens and Patras are also apparently being prosecuted for infringements of law arising from their homelessness as well as face expensive lawsuits from private individuals whose land they trespass due to the persistent failure of the Greek state to provide them with housing or, at the very least, with a relocation site where they would be safe from eviction;
• Bulgaria has also recently been found in violation of two aspects of the Revised European Social Charter by the European Committee of Social Rights as a result of continued failure of the government to address issues of core importance for access to adequate housing such as security of tenure, forced evictions, and widespread slum conditions among Roma in Bulgaria. The conditions giving rise to the decision have not yet been remedied by the Bulgarian government;
• The Slovak government has not yet implemented the 2005 finding by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in L.R. et al v. Slovakia committed an act of racial discrimination by canceling its plan to build social housing for Roma under explicitly anti-Romani pressure from non-Roma citizens. Slum conditions among Roma in some areas of particularly Central and Eastern Slovakia are some of the worst housing conditions we have seen anywhere. In recent weeks, new instances of forced evictions reported from the town of Nove Zamky continued the series of actions for the expulsion of Roma from centre of towns in Slovakia in the past several years. In addition, on 26 October 2007, private security guards violently expelled from their housing five Romani families in the town of Kremnica, with police reportedly looking on. Among the evicted were persons with valid rental contracts, as well as physically disabled persons. The families concerned were rendered homeless as a result of the eviction.
• The Czech government has failed to reverse the acts of the Vsetin municipality from October 2006 in expelling forcibly around 100 Roma to very isolated parts of the country. Falling against a backdrop of deepening racial segregation in the housing sector, the failure of the government to act to reverse this very high-profile act by the public authority has sent a tacit note of encouragement to those aiming to exclude Roma from Czech society. The Czech government has failed to counter the widely-publicized actions of the municipality of Bohumin in the forced eviction of several hundred predominantly Romani persons from a hostel for the poor in that town, and the serial harassment of those families which contested the eviction;
• According to reports, one year after the very high profile forced eviction of an extended Romani family in the village of Ambrus, Slovene authorities have still not provided adequate alternate accommodation to the persons expelled from their dwellings in 2006; Positive efforts by the government of Hungary to adopt and implement policies to address the growth of slums in recent years target a very limited number of predominantly small, rural slums. These actions have not been sufficient to counter the effects of very deep erosion of legal protections against forced eviction on the one hand and massive divestment of social housing on the other. Indeed, according to available data, the last time slum removal policies in Hungary made significant progress was 1993;
• The vast majority of Roma and others regarded as "Gypsies" ethnically cleansed from Kosovo or displaced within the province have not been able to return to their pre-conflict place of origin. Eight years of international governance of the province have not yet resulted in a reversal of ethnic cleansing, and whole Romani neighborhoods in Kosovo appear to have been expropriated. Concerns are growing that the processes to improve Kosovo's cadastral registry, as well as other changes to the property regime in Kosovo, may formalise the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Roma, Ashkalis and Egyptians from the province;
• In the period 2005-2007, authorities in Turkey have carried out serial forced evictions of Roma/Gypsy communities in a number of cities throughout the country forcing hundreds of individuals into homelessness. In some instances police used force to drive Roma away from settlements. A reconstruction plan for the historic Romani settlement Sulukule in Istanbul involves the complete demolition of the current neighbourhood, home to more than 3000 Roma, and its replacement with housing which is unaffordable for most of the original inhabitants. Demolition of Roma houses in Sulukule began in 2007 and threatens to effectively drive property owners out of the neighbourhood, whilst tenants are faced with even more precarious situation, having no legal protection;
• In the summer of 2006, Russian authorities bulldozed 37 houses belonging to Roma families and set fire to the ruins in the village of Dorozhniy, in Russia's Kaliningrad region. Around 200 Romani individuals, including 100 children, were forced into homelessness. The forced evictions took place after the Romani families' ownership of their homes was declared illegal in court proceedings which violated fundamental standards of due process. Forced evictions in Dorozhniy had started earlier that year, exposing several families with children to homelessness in severe winter conditions. Particularly disturbing are reports that in Dorozhniy as well as in other places in Russia candidates for public office at local level campaigned on promises to expel Roma from municipalities;
• In the United Kingdom, on 22 February 2007, authorities rejected the appeal against refusal of planning permission earlier submitted to Basildon District Council, in effect giving the green light for Basildon District Council to evict some l50 Gypsy and Traveller families from the area. To date, approximately a dozen homes have been destroyed in the nearby community of Hovefields. In the Dale Farm community, 86 homes currently face demolition. Elsewhere in the UK, during 2007, the High Court twice rejected appeals by Travellers in the Clays Lane community in London, slated for eviction as a result of development in the run-up to the Olympic Games. As of September 19, the Travellers concerned were awaiting forced eviction. The organizations named above join the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing calling on national governments to bring legal protections against forced evictions into conformity with international law; to strengthen domestic legal provisions to ensure security of tenure for vulnerable individuals and groups; to bring to justice public officials and others responsible for arbitrary actions for the expulsion of Roma from housing or land; to ensure access to remedy for the affected Romani individuals; as well as rigorously to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
  
  The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit human rights organization campaigning for the protection of housing rights and the prevention of forced evictions around the world. COHRE's overall objective is to promote and protect the housing rights of everyone everywhere. Further information about COHRE is available at http://cohre.org.
  
  The Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM), founded in 1993, monitors, publishes, lobbies, and litigates on human and minority rights and anti-discrimination issues in Greece and, from time to time, in the Balkans. It also monitors Greek and, when opportunity arises, Balkan media for stereotypes and hate speech. It issues press releases and prepares (usually jointly with other NGOs) detailed annual reports; parallel reports to UN Treaty Bodies; and specialized reports on ill-treatment and on ethno-national, ethno-linguistic, religious and immigrant communities, in Greece and in other Balkan countries. It operates a web site (http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr) and two web lists covering human rights issues and comprehensive and comparable presentations of minorities in the Balkan region.
  
  The Milan Simecka Foundation (MSF) is a Slovak based non-governmental organisation promoting human rights and democracy. Its three main areas of work are: Multicultural Education, Holocaust Education and Roma issues. Further information about the MSF can be found at: http://www.nadaciamilanasimecku.sk.
  
  OsservAzione – The Centre for Action Research against Roma and Sinti Discrimination -- is a non-governmental organisation engaging in a range of activities aimed at combating anti-Romani racism and human rights abuse of Roma and Sinti in Italy. For more information about OsservAzione, visit http://www.osservazione.org.