ENAR Weekly Mail 23

2 December 2005

 

·      General Assembly

ENAR held its annual General Assembly in Brussels from 25-27 November, gathering ENAR Board members, Substitutes or Observers from 21 EU countries. The meeting was opened by chairman Bashy Quraishy, followed by a key note speech by Tony Lockett, Acting Head of Unit, Anti Discrimination Unit, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the European Commission. Among the other items on the agenda were a presentation and discussion of the 2006-2007 Work Programme and a panel discussion on “Racism, Ethnicity, Religion and Terrorism”.

 

 

·      Malta: Together Against Hatred and Discrimination

On 12 December the Integra Foundation is organising a March for Peace entitled "Together Against Hatred and Discrimination", in Malta’s capital Valletta. The organisation also published a declaration with the same title on its website, which they are asking everyone to sign: http://www.integrafoundation.org/petition.htm

 

 

·      Italy: Trade unionists to get anti-racism training

Trade union representatives in several northern Italian regions with large immigrant populations are to take part in a pilot training programme to raise awareness of racism in the Italian workplace, its causes and remedies. The one-day anti-racism workshops, organised by Italy's equal opportunities ministry and local trade unions, are taking place in December in the cities of Trieste, Trento, Treviso and Verona. Read more

 

·      Poland: Training on the EU Race Directive for activists

A training seminar on combating discrimination within the framework of national legislation and the EC Race Directive will take place in Warsaw on 16-19 February 2006. It is targeted at Polish NGOs that work or intend to work on elimination of discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, and on minority protection. The training organised by Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in cooperation with Polskie Stowarzyszenie Edukacji Prawnej (PSEP) (Polish Association for Legal Education), in the framework of the Community Action Programme to combat discrimination. For further information contact: nurcan.kaya@mrgmail.org.

 

·      Slovenia: UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urges the authorities to remedy human rights violations

On 25 November the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued its recommendations to the Slovenian government, after considering Slovenia's report. The Committee concluded that the situation of the “erased” in Slovenia entails violations of these persons’ economic and social rights, including the rights to work, social security, health care and education. It also expressed regret at the “lack of information on the actual situation with regard to the enjoyment by those individuals of the rights set out in the Covenant”.

Read the Committee’s press release

Read Amnesty International’s press release: in English // in French

Prior to the examination of Slovenia’s report, AI had submitted a written briefing to the Committee. The document Slovenia: The 'erased' - Briefing to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, was made public on 28 November, and details AI’s concerns with regard to human rights violations linked to the unresolved status of individuals removed from the Slovenian registry of permanent residents in 1992 (known as the “erased”), including their lack of access to full reparation for the violation of their human rights to which the “erasure” led. Read the briefing (English only)

 

·      UK: Racist attacks rise in schools

A pupil is racially abused every hour in Birmingham's schools, according to figures obtained by The Birmingham Post. A total of 1,498 racist incidents against pupils were reported to the local education authority during the 192-day academic year. Read more

 

·      10 years EuroMed

On 27 and 28 November, leaders of 35 European and Southern Mediterranean countries met in Barcelona to mark the tenth anniversary of the launching of the Barcelona Process, a wide framework of political, economic and social relations between the 25 Member States of the European Union and ten Mediterranean Partners. They were expected to adopt a work plan designed to provide the basis for European-Mediterranean cooperation for the next five years. Read more

Read CaféBabel’s dossier Euromed, the mirage // Le mirage Euromed

And EurActiv: Is the EuroMed process going off the rails?

 

 

·      EU to strengthen checks on visas and asylum seekers

The Commission has adopted a package of measures designed to allow greater monitoring of those seeking entry to the EU. Part of the EU's strategy in fighting terrorism is to keep potential terrorists out by maintaining strict controls at external borders. The two measures proposed on 24 November 2005 seek to do this by improving the databases of information on visa and asylum seekers and widening access to them by relevant member state authorities. Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini described the measures as “essential in the fight against terrorism and organised crime”. Read more: in English // in French

 

·      MEPs look to tackle racism in football

Two MEPs, Claude Moraes and Chris Heaton-Harris, are leading an attempt to push racism higher up the European Parliament agenda via a declaration backed by European football governing body UEFA. Read more

 

 

·      Romanian National Council for Combating Discrimination ineffective

In a recent letter to the Romanian Prime Minister, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) urged him to consider a series of detailed recommendations for reform of Romania’s national anti-discrimination body, the National Council for Combating Discrimination. Read more

 

·      Roma denied education or sent to segregated schools in Greece: a case study and general information

The Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group-Greece have been trying to help the children of a Roma community in the Athens area to register and attend school. Their experience, detailed in this case study, indicates that access to education for the Roma in Greece is often impossible, because of the reactions of racist non-Roma neighbors combined with the reluctance of local, regional and central state authorities to implement the otherwise good legal framework that creates a positive obligation on the state to secure all children the nine-year mandatory education. Read more

 

·      Ireland's nomads expose a racial divide

Widening social divisions in one of the world’s richest countries have triggered conflict. Beside the grotto of porcelain saints in a corner of her spotless caravan, Biddy McDonagh described the rats that plague her Traveller halting site. “They're the size of cats and move like greyhounds,” she said. They were a four-legged memento of the local dump that once sat on this stretch of land on Dublin's bleak north-western outskirts. Read more

 

·      Kosovo: Poisoned security

The people who run Kosovo are starting to heed mounting evidence of severe lead contamination in Romani refugee camps. After six years, calls for the Roma people living in Trepca in northern Kosovo to be moved to better housing may finally be gathering pace. Activists have for several years asserted that camp residents are being poisoned and dying from lead in the ground, water, and air of the camps. Now, Kosovo’s UN administrators and elected government have finally promised to re-house the camp dwellers. Read more

 

·      Former IRU's President speaks out against an independent Kosovo

Rajko Djuric, former president of International Romani Union (IRU) and current president of SCG Roma Foundation and member of Roma PEN Centre, has published his comments on the discussion of future development in Kosovo regarding Roma. Read more

·      Dissatisfaction with European Roma and Travellers Forum

Dzeno Association has noticed some e-mails circulating within the Roma network recently that express serious reservations and criticisms of the European Roma and Travellers Forum (ERTF). Dzeno shares these disappointments. Read more

 

·      Action needed to help Roma women in Europe

At a public hearing on 23 November on the plight of Roma women in Europe, members of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights Committee agreed that new policies and tangible measures are needed to tackle the problems these women face in both western and eastern European countries. There was a consensus that the position of Roma women as a forgotten and invisible minority must be changed. Read more

 

 

·      EU Visas and the Western Balkans

A recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) examines the current EU visa regime with regard to Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro including Kosovo. It highlights the policy’s sclerotic deficiencies that jeopardise the objective of enhanced European integration and damage the countries’ European outlook and hopes of eventual EU candidate status. Read more

 

·      ERRC Country Report: Always Somewhere Else: Anti-Gypsyism in France

France is known as a country of human rights. “Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood” – these declarations remain at the heart of the French Republic. Despite these commitments, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies and Travellers in France are denied the very basic right of equal treatment and experience regular denial and interference with almost all fundamental civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.

Read more (English only) - Download the 342-page report: in English // in French

 

 

·      Restricted Call for Tender: Phare Sofia/Bulgaria - educational and medical integration of vulnerable minority groups with a special focus on Roma

There are two calls: in both the tenderers are asked for providing educational and vocational support for vulnerable minority groups with a special focus on Roma in Bulgaria. One call focuses on the component Education; the other on the component Health. Read more (info in English, but with a link to the relevant French documents on the bottom of the page)