The question of Roma integration has long been on the agenda as Bulgaria strove for EU membership. On the eve of the country joining the EU, the question remains unresolved, writes Yana Moyseeva.
In its monitoring report in May 2006 on Bulgaria's readiness to join the EU, the European Commission (EC) again directed serious criticism towards the country's protection and integration of minorities, and the Roma in particular. Every year since 1999, the sections of EC reports on Bulgaria's protection and integration of minorities have been similarly critical. The highly marginalised status of the Roma has not changed much since 1999, the point at which the Government was to have begun dealing with the issue.
After the democratic changes in Bulgaria in 1989, a succession of governments have tried to do something to improve the status of the Roma. However, it is only in the past two years that any real steps have been taken. However, this action can hardly be said to represent an act of goodwill to help the Roma. Rather, it has been a result of mounting pressure from the EU.
The first step towards change was the ratification of the framework Convention for the Protection of Minority Rights by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in 1999, which took place under Ivan Kostov's Union of Democratic Forces government. By ratifying the convention, Bulgaria acknowledged for the first time that national minorities existed and that the country had a responsibility to protect them. However, the convention had the force only of a recommendation, and as a result, the need for a stronger legislation led to the Anti-Discrimination Act in 2004, much fought for by NGOs. As envisaged by the Act, an independent body – the Commission for Protection against Discrimination (CPD) – was established a year later.
The May 2006 EC report acknowledged that the Act had been seen to work, given that several cases to protect victims of discrimination had been filed. However, the report said, even though the CPD had been set up, it is not clear whether the commission had sufficient human and financial resources to do its job independently. What is more, as quoted in Roma newspaper Drom Dromendar in May, European Commissioner Olli Rehn said: “No urgent measures have been taken so that it (the CPD) starts working within the shortest period of time.”
The fact that the much needed Anti-Discrimination Act was passed as late as 2004 is among evidence of a long-standing lack of political will to deal with the Roma issue. Governments seemed unwilling to accept that ethnic minorities, and mostly the Roma, were indeed suffering from serious discrimination in all spheres of life. The passing of the anti-discrimination legislation was definitely a step in the right direction, but was by far not enough to even begin solving the problem. Specific actions were needed. Since 1997 a number of programmes to improve the life of Roma have been in place. But so far, none has been taken seriously by those in power.
The first, entitled Programme for Solving the Problems of the Roma in the Republic of Bulgaria, was adopted in 1997. However, implementation did not get off the ground. Five days after the programme was approved, the government stepped down. The new government, because it was seen as the first genuinely democratic government since 1989, raised high expectations among NGOs. In 1999, human rights organisations put forward a document to then-prime minister Kostov – The Framework Programme for Equal Integration of the Roma in Bulgarian Society. This programme proposed specific actions in education, employment, health care, housing and action against discrimination. The 75 NGOs that took part in drafting the programme believed that it was the manual for improving the life of the Roma. Accepted in 1999, it has since been the official state document exclusively designed to assist the Roma.
However, expectations again were in vain. Kostov's government ended its term of office in 2001 without having even started to implement the programme. “This document turned out to be just a piece of paper with zero result,” Yuliana Metodieva of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said in June this year. “To have a document and not to carry out even its basic points, means you've done it solely for Europe. We do a lot of things like that – just for Europe,” Metodieva said.
Indeed, a full action plan for the implementation of the programme was not drawn up until 2003. Even its most recent update, for 2006, did not go through Parliament until June 2006. By the time it was finally accepted, half of the calendar year had already passed.
As the government of Simeon Saxe-Coburg came into power in 2001, it surprised many by initiating a completely new programme aimed at the Roma – The People are the Treasure of the Country – instead of starting to work on the already ratified programme, which after all had cost time and the resources of those who drafted it. What was more, Saxe-Coburg's government did not consult any NGOs when coming up with its new programme.
Again, many of the promised tasks from the new programme remained only on paper. For example, a government body to implement policies aimed at minorities – the National Agency for Minorities – was supposed to be set up. But instead, the Saxe-Coburg government set up a directorate within the existing National Council for Ethnic and Demographic Issues (DNCEDI). It was supposed to help the council, but its responsibilities remained undefined until March this year, when the EU required that the DNCEDI be restructured with more staff and clearer goals.
The same programme promised to monitor the accomplishment of the previously adopted programme. The government admitted that the programme was not working, but in effect did nothing to remedy the situation. The text of the section Integration of Minorities was broad and vague and lacking in specifying action to be taken.
Since 2005, the focus has been around another programme – The Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, referred to as the Decade. It is an initiative by eight Central and Eastern European countries, and is a joint international effort to change the lives of Roma in these countries. It has its own framework programme that in effect takes on board the same clauses as the 1999 document. But the acceptance of this new programme served only to confuse. “It's all fine, but which programme are we implementing now? The (1999) programme, Decade of Roma Inclusion or what?” Iskra Stoikova of the Romani Baht Foundation said in June. “Everyone writes what they want. There are far too many strategies and documents that are not co-ordinated with each other. It's chaos,” Stoikova said. Roma MP Toma Tomov also emphasised this point. Quoted in the Roma publication Drom Dromendar in February, he said “the Roma issue has not so far been discussed in the current ruling coalition, and this is why every minister is working separately without knowing what [policies] the whole government undertakes”.
A lack of co-ordination and communication endures. Whatever names an integration programmes may carry, the bottom line is the extremely poor social status of most Roma around the country. Take, for instance, education – meant to enjoy top priority, according to the 1999 programme and the Decade.
The issue of Roma education has the most profound direct effect on every other aspect of integration – poverty, health, employment, crime, discrimination and so on. Nonetheless, politicians still seem reluctant to face the fact that the key to effective integration is in the education of Roma children. Or rather, lip service is paid, but there is scant evidence of any serious action.
Figures from mid 2006 show that currently in Bulgaria more than 13 per cent of Roma children over the age of 15 have no education. Those with just primary education add up to less than 80 per cent. Only 10 per cent have secondary education and of them, just 0.2 per cent have a university degree. These frightening statistics are a direct consequence of the fact that 70 per cent of Roma children are educated in segregated ghetto schools. There are 106 such schools around the country in which the student body is 100 per cent Roma. Moreover, a great number of children are still put in schools for children with learning difficulties when the students are actually fully mentally and physically fit. The quality of education and the conditions in such segregated schools is gravely sub-standard. As a result, most students end up dropping out, often barely able to read. As this makes such young people highly unemployable, they remain in the ghetto where they grow up living day to day – mostly off social benefits, one-off jobs, or crime. This explains why their integration is so difficult as well as why, since 2000, desegregation of Roma schools has been one of the primary tasks for some NGOs. But a succession of governments have offered little co-operation.
Desegregation is supposed to be one of the top priorities in the 1999 programme. But in 2004 the government refused to accept a proposed draft law to set up a fund for education integration of minority children. It was supposed to sponsor a centre for educational integration for children from ethnic minorities. According to NGO the Human Rights Project (HRP), the idea for the fund and the centre was refused for nationalistic reasons. "The draft establishes preferences for minority children and puts the majority students in a disadvantageous situation." According to a HRP report on October 7 2004, this was said by MPs at a conference in September 2004 on the problems of education of Roma children. When the idea for the centre was initially declined, the HRP concluded that Bulgarian politicians prefer Roma people to remain illiterate and poor in order to continue being susceptible to manipulation before elections.
Nonetheless, the centre for educational integration was set up in 2005. For this year it had a budget of one million leva, but according to Romani Baht Foundation this has not yet been absorbed.
Parents of Roma and non-Roma children must also be convinced that desegregation is of benefit to all of society and is the key to integration which everyone – Roma or non-Roma – claim they want to happen. Many Roma parents worry that if their child goes to a "white" school, he or she will be bullied and discriminated against. On the other hand, Bulgarian parents are often seized by prejudice and do not want their child to study in the same class with Roma children. Such worries are acknowledged by the Decade of Roma inclusion and its plan envisages a number of seminars and talks with parents to overcome stereotypical negative attitudes. The most important part is to convince both sides that successful desegregation is possible. It has already happened in a number of towns around Bulgaria. The Open Society Institute and European Roma Rights Centre sponsored desegregation initiatives in Sliven, Shoumen, Vidin, Stara Zagora and Haskovo. Money was provided for shoes and clothes for the poorest, pick up buses, free books and breakfast. However, desegregation is too a big job just for NGOs to do. It needs government involvement and funding. Even though under the Decade for Roma inclusion there are plans for desegregation, resources are lacking, said the BHC's Metodieva. She said that permanent integration would be achieved only through taking Roma children out of ghetto schools and putting them to study with Bulgarian children. “This will provide them with equal access to quality education and in 12 years we will change the cycle with a new generation of educated young individuals,” she said.
Like desegregation, living conditions of the Roma are also of major concern and important for successful integration. About 70 per cent of Roma houses around the country are illegally built in what later became Roma ghettos. Stench, sewage leakages, animals (such as horses and pigs) bred outdoors have all been a catalyst for years of ethnic tension between Roma living in ghettos close to neighbourhoods populated by non-Roma Bulgarians.
In recent years, many surveys on the housing problems in Roma neighbourhoods have been done by the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, and the EC, but according to think tank the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), no funds were spent on practical solutions. To now, Bulgarian governments have been seeking temporary solutions to the problem. The current Government is no exception.
A relatively recent example is the ghetto in Batalova Vodenitsa in Sofia. On June 23 this year, residents got an official notice issued by the municipal authorities to vacate their homes within seven days, failing which they would be forcibly evicted by the police. However, the destruction did not happen, as a result of a letter to Bulgaria's President Purvanov from European MPs saying that this was anti-Roma behaviour. ERRC programme director Claude Cahn condemned the approach of the authorities in the Batalova Vodenitsa case. He said that the threatened evictions of the Romany families were “the extreme face of the decades-long failure of the Bulgarian state to ensure the access of Roma to adequate housing”.
There have been a number of such instances around the country, in which both sides had reason to be angry. Bulgarians complain about the revolting state of their neighbourhood, while no measures are taken by the municipality to provide alternative accommodation on eviction day. This is in breach of conditions set by international human rights law and outcries by national and international human rights groups are certain to follow.
Since May 2004, a national programme for the improvement of housing conditions of Roma in Bulgaria was adopted by the Cabinet. It provided for 30 000 residences to be built and a further 47 000 to be renovated in Roma neighbourhoods around the country by 2015. The funding for the period 2005-2015 amounts to 1.26 billion leva. Some residences have already been built in Stolipinovo and Sheker Mahala in Plovdiv, but have been reported to be too luxurious and out of keeping with the way of life of the Roma. “A poor family with five children does not need glass walls for a nice view,” says Petar Georgiev, leader of Roma Confederation Europe. “Instead of maisonettes, they could have used the money to build more homes in keeping with the lifestyle of the Roma,” he said. In an interview on June 23, Maya Cholakova, the director of DNCEDI, said that the project, done by the Ministry of Regional Development, had been highly unsuccessful and a waste of money.
If completed, the housing programme will result in improvement of living conditions of more than 400 000 people around Bulgaria. But whether this becomes a reality, is yet to be seen.
It is much the same with regard to the recently adopted health strategy. Roma have the worst health condition in the country. Whether because some Roma neighbourhoods are far away from medical facilities, or because of discrimination, many Roma are excluded from access to health services. While mortality among Roma is 10 years higher than the average of the country, almost half of the Roma population does not have health insurance.
After many years of inaction, a health strategy for disadvantaged members of ethnic minorities and an associated action plan were adopted at last in 2005. Provision of health information, health education in Roma populated schools, increase of the scope of areas covered by health insurance, and mobile health clinics are some of the services envisaged by the strategy. However, as much as the adoption of a health strategy is positive news for the Roma, most of the actions were planned for 2006 and 2007 and it is therefore early to tell if it they will be effective.
More efficient programmes are also needed for solving the massive unemployment among Roma. The arrival of democracy and a market economy profoundly hit the Roma, leaving most jobless. Data provided by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) in June, showed that the unemployment rate among the Roma was about 70 per cent. Moreover, 70 per cent of all 117 000 jobless in the country who received state benefits in the first five months of this year were Roma.
High unemployment among Roma is one of the most serious factors leading to their social isolation. There have been a number of national employment and training programmes. For example, in 2005, 5500 people, including 1800 Roma, were employed to work on the Beautiful Bulgaria programme. However, the weakness of such employment strategies is that they are not directly aimed at the Roma.
All in all, it has to be acknowledged that in the recent three to four years, politicians seem to have woken up a bit about solving the Roma integration issue. Positive steps include the new Anti-Discrimination Act, the updated action plan for the implementation of the 1999 programme, Bulgaria's participation in the Decade of Roma Inclusion, and the adoption of new housing and health strategies for disadvantaged minorities. However, the country is still far from solving the Roma issue.
There are many flaws in the entire integration process. It has taken far too long for basic policies and legislations to be adopted which are aimed at improving the social and economic condition of the Roma. It is now almost a cliche among Bulgarians to think that if it were not for the EU, what has already been achieved wouldn't have even started yet. Says Antonina Zhelyazkova of the International Centre for Minorities Studies: “These two governments are working simply because they have no other option.
The severe monitoring from the EU does not allow inactivity. Politicians have to actually do something.”
The lack of co-ordination among different programmes and documents results in poor efficiency of adopted programmes as well as massive confusion as to what is being implemented at any time. Responsibilities need to be made much clearer, as well as the people assigned to implement them. In due course, positive results would come much faster and be much more effective.
The role of DNCEDI also needs to be much stronger. Even though it was recently restructured, its administrative capacity continues to be weak. What is more, its lack of power ultimately means poor control over the funds that come into the country aimed at the Roma. According to a June 4 report by Bulgarian news agency BTA, the former speaker of Parliament Ognyan Gerdjikov said that the national council for ethnic and demographic issues did not have the power it should. “A large amount of all funds go through different ministries. Thus, it is difficult to track exactly where money comes from, what money goes through where, who controls it and how it is spent.”
Thus, if the NCEDI and its directorate do not have the capacity to control all domestic and foreign funds aimed for the Roma, a solution should be found. This is essential to achieve full transparency. Otherwise, the result is an alleged 200 million euro missing for the past five years, as the BTA article reported.
“Roma integration” has turned into a buzz phrase. But because actions in this direction started only in the recent few years, at least another 10 years will need to pass until any results are felt, and that is only if future governments continue this job systematically. There is great concern as to what will happen when Bulgaria joins the EU. Will strict monitoring by the EU carry on, and if not, what will the implications be for the Roma as well as for society as a whole? Opinions and predictions vary, but one thing appears certain: it will take many years of hard work for Bulgaria to become a name associated with a truly modern, democratic and tolerant country. At this very moment, it is still far from it.
