BULGARIAN President Petar Stoyanov appealed for equal education opportunities for Roma people at an international forum on the desegregation of Roma schools.
The crucial question for discussion was: “Will educating Roma children in mainstream schools help their integration into society and will it help to reduce discrimination against Romas in Bulgaria?”
The forum opened in Sofia on Friday and was attended by education experts, government officials, and representatives of the European Commission and the World Bank. The European Roma Rights Centre from Budapest, and the Open Society Institute’s Roma Participation Programme from Budapest were also on hand. Deborah Harding, vice-president of the national foundations office of the Open Society Institute at its New York base, also participated in the forum.
The Vidin-based Roma organisation DROM presented a schools integration project which has resulted in about 250 Roma children – from a Roma district – being successfully integrated into schools outside their district.
The project was introduced at the conference as an example to be developed in Bulgaria as well as in other countries in Eastern Europe.
The Roma Participation Programme of the Open Society Institute (Budapest) also supported the DROM project. Its director Rumyan Russinov said: “The project was a crucial step towards integrating Roma children in the mainstream educational system. The successful results of the participation programme in Vidin showed that we are wrong to say that Roma children would not adapt. The government should use Vidin as a model for desegregating schools nationwide.”
Dimitrina Petrova, director of the European Roma Rights Centre, insisted that Bulgaria, as a country in the process of EU-accession, should also comply with the European Union Race Equality Directive. She said: “Bulgarian officials tolerate all-Roma schools that are greatly inferior to mixed regular ones. There is a strong case here for direct and indirect discrimination on the part of the Bulgarian authorities.”
President Stoyanov said: “DROM’s initiative shows that civil society does exists in Bulgaria. Roma people get a very insufficient education, compared to that non-Roma Bulgarian children receive. There is a hidden discrimination against the Roma people in a post-communist country situation. The DROM programme is a good start and the integration of the Roma people is in the hands of us all.”
The crucial question for discussion was: “Will educating Roma children in mainstream schools help their integration into society and will it help to reduce discrimination against Romas in Bulgaria?”
The forum opened in Sofia on Friday and was attended by education experts, government officials, and representatives of the European Commission and the World Bank. The European Roma Rights Centre from Budapest, and the Open Society Institute’s Roma Participation Programme from Budapest were also on hand. Deborah Harding, vice-president of the national foundations office of the Open Society Institute at its New York base, also participated in the forum.
The Vidin-based Roma organisation DROM presented a schools integration project which has resulted in about 250 Roma children – from a Roma district – being successfully integrated into schools outside their district.
The project was introduced at the conference as an example to be developed in Bulgaria as well as in other countries in Eastern Europe.
The Roma Participation Programme of the Open Society Institute (Budapest) also supported the DROM project. Its director Rumyan Russinov said: “The project was a crucial step towards integrating Roma children in the mainstream educational system. The successful results of the participation programme in Vidin showed that we are wrong to say that Roma children would not adapt. The government should use Vidin as a model for desegregating schools nationwide.”
Dimitrina Petrova, director of the European Roma Rights Centre, insisted that Bulgaria, as a country in the process of EU-accession, should also comply with the European Union Race Equality Directive. She said: “Bulgarian officials tolerate all-Roma schools that are greatly inferior to mixed regular ones. There is a strong case here for direct and indirect discrimination on the part of the Bulgarian authorities.”
President Stoyanov said: “DROM’s initiative shows that civil society does exists in Bulgaria. Roma people get a very insufficient education, compared to that non-Roma Bulgarian children receive. There is a hidden discrimination against the Roma people in a post-communist country situation. The DROM programme is a good start and the integration of the Roma people is in the hands of us all.”
