Roma Demand an End to Segregation in Czech Schools, Five Years after Landmark Court Ruling

Roma Demand an End to Segregation in Czech Schools, Five Years after Landmark Court Ruling

Over the past week Czech Roma and their allies have been marking that five years have now passed since the European Court of Human Rights ordered an end to systematic segregation of Roma children in the Czech education system—five years, with no real reform.

Roma parents and their children staged a march in the northern city of Ostrava, demanding change in the first public protest of its kind. Amnesty International and the European Roma Rights Center published a report on the continuing failure to end separate schooling and joined the Open Society Foundations in lobbying Czech officials. To raise broader public awareness of the issue, we also organized a public exhibition of photos in Prague’s Lucerna Palace, focused on some of the original applicants in the ECHR case and their children.

Robert Basch, head of the Open Society Fund–Prague, said: “The ministry of education and the government must realize that sending Roma children, or any children, to sub-standard schools destroys their future.” James A. Goldston of the Justice Initiative urged an end to “educational apartheid” in the Czech school system, saying: “The law, and basic human decency, demand no less.”

OSJ, 15-XI-12