This issue of Roma Rights focuses on challenges and channels of political participation of Roma people, examining various ways in which Roma become involved in policy-making and politics, and the relative successes and failures of initiatives aimed at increasing their participation.  Despite much attention to the topic over recent years, Roma participation still stands for an empty slogan. Roma are rarely consulted, their involvement is marginal and their voice is not heard during the policy-making process. Should one be surprised about the limited success in improving the situation of Roma all over Europe in spite of political commitments and resources allocated for Roma inclusion? Participation of Roma is a good indicator to ...

The latest issue of Roma Rights, the journal of the European Roma Rights Centre, is available online now. This issue is dedicated to funding. Will Guy examines the lessons learned (or not) from EU PHARE funding, the original funding available to help accession countries get ready to join the EU. He argues that the problems identified during the accessions of the last decade have not been resolved, and the European Commission has not intervened directly enough. 

This issue of Roma Rights is dedicated to a consideration of implementation of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments and other decisions of international adjudicatory bodies. Although implementation problems plague national justice systems, the European and international systems, without coercive enforcement mechanisms, present particular challenges to implementation at the national level.

Many international instruments and domestic laws forbid discrimination on a range of grounds. People and human societies are diverse, complex and multi-layered. In most cases, each person bears more than one identity, such as being Roma, a woman, a mother, disabled and so on. There are cases in which a person becomes the victim of a discriminatory practice due to the combination of these different identities. For example, a Romani woman can be denied a job because she is a “woman” and she is “Romani”.

For some time now, extremism has been visible in several European countries. Political parties espousing an explicit anti-immigrant, anti-Romani and/or anti-Semitic agenda are gaining electoral success and support from the public. The June 2009 European Parliament elections exemplified this tendency: In several countries, extremist political parties achieved unprecedented success and now enjoy increased political power.

2008-09 will be remembered by Roma rights and human rights activists for the extremely troublesome situation of Romani communities in Italy. Mounting racism and anti-Romani sentiment erupted in Naples and Milan in May 2008. Moreover, various legal measures and policies adopted by the public authorities, such as the ongoing "census" of the Romani population and the transportation of Roma to special camps even further from city centres in order to "sanitise" urban centres were outright abuses of individual freedoms and rights.

On 13 November 2007, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights made a landmark decision advancing anti-discrimination jurisprudence in Europe, ruling that the segregation of Romani students in special remedial schools is a form of unlawful discrimination. This momentous decision for Roma across Europe was made in the case D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic (also known as the "Ostrava Case").