End discrimination against Roma children

Solidarity with Czech workers

Standards Committee: Convention 111

ILO, Geneva, June 2009

Speech by TUC member of the ILO Governing Body Simon Steyne

A key aim of ITUC and Education International engagement in the current Pan-European restructuring of the Global March against Child Labour is to promote inclusive quality education. Yet we remain preoccupied by persistent discrimination against Europe's eight million Roma citizens and their children. Such discrimination is contrary to European Union principles and to the shared global values expressed by the universal ratification in the region of ILO Convention 111.

Mme Chair, besides the Experts' observations, the Council of Europe has noted that, despite some government programmes designed to promote integration, Roma people in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe - including in my own country - remain at risk of social exclusion. As the son of a family forced to flee Prague in 1939, my desire for an end to racism and discrimination and its institutional expression in the Czech Republic is no surprise.

At the beginning of 2007, the Czech government proclaimed its commitment to protect in practice the respect of liberties and human and minority rights. By the end of 2007 that commitment faced two key tests: how to address two egregious, long-term violations - coercive sterilisation of Roma women and segregation of Roma children in special schools. The Czech authorities have recognized - but not yet addressed adequately - the horror of coercive sterilisation. Time prevents me from dealing with both matters.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in November on a case lodged by 18 Roma, now aged 16-22, that the Czech Republic has discriminated against Roma children by routinely placing them, based on discriminatory tests, in special schools for children with learning difficulties, preventing them from following the mainstream school curriculum in integrated schools. Roma pupils formed a majority in such special schools.

In the 1960s in Britain, many British children of Afro-Caribbean origin suffered a similar fate. The scandal of disproportionate segregation in schools for the so-called 'educationally sub-normal' became a cause celebre in the struggle against institutional racism in education. That was forty years ago.

True, the Czech Republic did not ratify the Convention until 1993, but it is extraordinary - and extraordinarily depressing - that twenty years after the Velvet Revolution - and forty after the Prague Spring - we are having a similar debate.

Equality of opportunity in education goes to the heart of equality in employment and occupation - there is an indivisible link between discrimination against children on grounds of ethnicity and their chances of decent work. Despite education legislation in force since 2005, and eight years since the case was filed in the domestic courts, we await the successful desegregation of the Czech education system.

We trust that the new Education Minister, in the light of the new discrimination legislation, will ensure rapid implementation of the binding European judgement and pursue equality in education for Roma children. Mutual trust must be established between Roma parents, children, communities and school authorities, with leadership from the new Minister and in cooperation with the teachers unions. Roma children must be assured of access, without discrimination, to education in mainstream schools and classes with children from the ethnic Czech majority. Equality in employment and occupation will not be achieved otherwise.

Mme Chair, ratifying member states have constitutional and treaty obligations to combat racism in employment and occupation. The Roma - now one of the largest and poorest minorities in Europe - were among those who endured attempted genocide between 1939 and 1945. A quarter of a million now live in the Czech Republic. Does that historical legacy not entail an additional moral obligation on all states - not least those which suffered under fascist rule or occupation - to ensure that Roma citizens and their children enjoy full equality in law and practice in education, employment and occupation?