Advokaten 1
Advokaten ledaren
Gästkrönika Do to Combat Roma Poverty take a limi
ted number of cases. We currently have about 80 cases pending in fourteen jurisdictions in Europe, all of them against public bodies. We need more cases to reverse centuries of anti-Roma discrimination. You can help. 2. make your time and expertise available to an NGO. You know something that is useful to people supporting Roma rights. Contact a local NGO supporting Roma and let them know you are available to do something (a few hours of legal advice to the NGO, holding advice sessions for the Roma they work with). Make sure you are on the email lists of European pro bono clearinghouses. If you think you can’t help, you’re wrong: Roma are underserved by the legal profession and need access to the kind of expertise we have. You have something to offer. 3. change your attitude. Roma poverty is not really about poverty. It is also not about culture, nor is it about things happening “somewhere else”. It is about discrimination. On a lot of levels. Centuries of oppression and exclusion leave minorities poor, everywhere. Roma cannot get jobs, in Sweden or elsewhere, because of discrimination in hiring. Not only blatant racism (a boss who says “We don’t take gypsies”), but discrimination of the subconscious kind. Remember the last time you hired someone or got hired? When an employer and the prospective employee come from the same background (national, ethnic, linguistic), it is more likely that employee will get hired. In a world where so few Roma are in a position to hire anyone, that makes for a lot of discrimination. I hear you grumbling as you read this. “I’ve heard it’s in their culture …” Advokaten Nr 8 • 2015 “If you are reading this article in order to find out whether the Legal Director of the European Roma Rights Centre gives money to Roma begging in the street, then the answer is no: twenty-five years later, I side with my mother.” you want to say, and you want me to tell you whether begging is something that Roma do (just like you wanted me to tell you whether you should give money in the street). Well, too bad. This is all I will tell you: you know nothing about Romani culture if you think begging is a part of it; I probably know a little more than you do about Romani societies and I wouldn’t dream of connecting what you see on the streets of Stockholm with anything anthropological or sociological – it’s about rights violations; and anyone who ascribes poverty, begging, or criminal activity to the culture of an ethnic group is being racist. Adam Weiss The author is the Legal Director of the European Roma Rights Centre, a Budapest-based NGO combating anti-Romani racism throughout Europe. You can reach him on adam.weiss@errc.org. 23