Housing rights project work in Slovakia
15 July 2004
Housing rights project work in Slovakia
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has co-funded project “Defending Roma Housing Rights in Slovakia”. The project involves field research, litigation and training components. An initial phase of the project involved legal research and factual research into the housing rights situation of Roma in Slovakia. The ERRC designed research methodologies for researchers and supervised a number of local research projects. On the basis of this research, a number of domestic and international lawsuits have been filed, focussing on Roma housing rights issues. In addition, the ERRC, in partnership with the Bratislava-based Milan Šimecka Foundation and with the co-operation of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, prepared a training manual for Slovak Romani activists entitled, "Defending Roma Housing Rights in Slovakia: A Training Manual on International Law and the Right to Adequate Housing", tailored to the needs of Slovak Roma. The manual was translated into Slovak and published in 1,000 copies in March 2004. On March 6 and 7, 2004, the ERRC, the MSF and COHRE held a housing rights training workshop in Košice. Currently, the project partners are working on an advocacy campaign to improve the transposition of international legal standards related to the right to adequate housing into the Slovak domestic legal framework. For further information on the project, please contact Tara Bedard: tara@errc.org
