Roma Rights 1 and 2/2003 addresses issues pertaining to anti-discrimination law in Europe. The ban on discrimination is anchored in both international Covenants, as well as in a number of other international legal instruments. European legal norms banning discrimination are currently in a period of dramatic expansion, due to consensus that the dignity of an individual in a democratic society depends to a great extent on her having access to legal tools with which she may seek and secure redress in instances in which her dignity has been harmed through arbitrary treatment.

Roma Rights 3-4/2002 addresses issues pertaining to segregation and desegregation of Roma in Europe. Dimitrina Petrova, Executive Director of the ERRC, expressed the ERRC's position in the edition's editorial: "We see segregation as an obstacle to accessing rights and we fight to remove it. ...School desegregation in the view of the ERRC is the first step and the backbone of Romani integration. Without it, school success in a ghetto school is inadequate once the child is out in the larger world, competing with non-Roma for university placements or for jobs. 

The ERRC’s first publication ever addressed the theme of “Fortress Europe” – restrictive laws, policies and practices in Europe aimed at or resulting in the exclusion of non-citizens. Divide and Deport: Roma and Sinti in Austria, published in September 1996, examined Roma rights issues generally in Austria, but was particularly preoccupied with Roma who had arrived in Austria in recent decades, since as a result among other things of the Holocaust, these comprised an estimated 5/6 of Austria’s Romani population. Divide and Deport described in detail the legal and administrative scaffolding which, taken as a whole and in combination with a powerful and discursive local hostility to “Gypsies”, was rendering life with dignity close to ...

When in 1996 the ERRC first began work, among our first observations about the interaction of Roma and the wider society was the following: most governments in Europe – where they addressed issues facing Roma at all – treated the Romani issue as a “social issue”. Our early research efforts told us that this approach was not adequate. We heard in this language governments denying racism. We heard governments telling Roma – and the world – that once they have resolved issues related to poverty, the problems of Roma would be solved. We revolted against this approach because of what we saw and heard around us: hate speech, humiliating treatment at the hands of local authorities and the police, discriminatory burdens.

Two major events of autumn at the ERRC were the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and a lawsuit against the United Kingdom in connection with the practice of stationing liaison officers at the Prague airport, apparently to stop Roma from coming to Britain. The ERRC sent a delegation of more than fifty activists (about forty of them Romani) to the World Conference. Our group was huge even by the standards of the massive event in Durban. Our aims were maximum visibility and the establishment of the Romani issue as among Europe's most pressing race concerns. Morag Goodwin, who accompanied the ERRC delegation, describes in these pages ERRC efforts surrounding the World Conference, and we also publish in this issue the ...

This issue’s special theme is governmental policy programmes related to Roma. We offer critical comments on the existing programmes and the policy-making processes in several countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. However, I should note several ERRC assumptions that may have remained only very implicit in this issue. Most importantly, the main target of our concerns in the area of governmental policies is missing here: the governments which have not developed any Roma-related programmes at all. It may be argued that a bad programme is worse than no programme. The articles in this issue suggest rather that the contrary is true. Policy making everywhere has turned out to be a long ...

Recently, we lost a case. The circumstances are as follows: as I write, a group of around twenty-five Roma are living in shanties by the side of a road in the village of Cabiny, northern Slovakia. They have been homeless for more than ten years, but all have legal residence in one of two neighbouring villages. They previously lived in housing provided on a co-operative farm where they worked, but when the farm was broken up and partly sold in 1990, the housing units were closed and the Roma evicted. Anti-Romani sentiment is very high in the area, and the town councils of both villages adopted bans on the entry of Roma to the villages in 1997. As a result of ERRC action, the bans were rescinded, but neither municipality made any effort to ...