In November 2006 a coalition of Romani women’s organizations in Macedonia^¹made public its Platform for Joint Action for Promoting the Social Status of Romani Women (Romani Women’s Platform).^²Explicitly adopting a human rights perspective, the Platform proposed a comprehensive agenda of measures which could be taken by the Macedonian government in order to guarantee the rights of Romani women.

These proposals were made in the absence of any progress by the Macedonian government to guarantee the political, economic and social rights of their Romani citizens, and where “projects” have taken the place of government responsibility. Such projects have sought to improve the situation of Roma; these have been funded by international donors or international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and implemented largely by domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and INGOs.

Frustrated by such short-term measures, some Romani individuals and NGOs have increasingly adopted a rights-based perspective. They are now calling on the Macedonian government to honour its obligations under international human rights treaties to which Macedonia is a party. These obligations require the Macedonian authorities to respect, protect and fulfil the civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights of the Romani community, often with the aim of also improving the rights of other poor and marginalized communities in Macedonia. Amnesty International echoes their call.

Double discrimination

This report documents the double discrimination suffered by Romani women in Macedonia, on the basis of both their ethnicity and their gender.^³

“Discrimination against women shall mean any distinction, exclusion, or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.”

(Article 1, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women)

“…[R]acial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

(Article 1, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination)

Such double discrimination – by the state, by non-state actors and often by men within the Romani community – is widespread, routine and pervasive. For example, 39 per cent of Romani women in Macedonia have had no education, or an incomplete primary education, compared to 22 per cent of Romani men and 8 per cent of non-Roma; in employment, 83 per cent of Romani women and 65 per cent of Romani men had never been employed in the formal economy, compared to 50 per cent of non-Roma; in health, 31 per cent of Romani women compared to 27 per cent of Romani men suffered from chronic illness, compared with 23 per cent of non-Roma.^⁴

Statistics consistently show how Romani women and girls experience intersecting and overlapping forms of discrimination. Poverty is both directly and indirectly instrumental in denying many Roma access to basic human rights. Poverty may deny them access to services because they are unable to afford the documentation which grants the right to citizenship or the right to access services. They may also be unable to afford the costs of access to justice when their rights have been violated.

Not only do Romani women face double discrimination in accessing rights, but Amnesty International’s research also finds that these rights are often dependent on each other. Denied the right to education, for example, Romani women subsequently face discrimination in access to both the right to work and the right to health. Moreover, these rights are not available to two particular groups of women – those without citizenship and those without adequate documentation.

Macedonia’s failure to honour its international obligations

While the Romani community in Macedonia is considered the most integrated in the Balkans, this has been attributed to a policy of benign neglect rather than to positive measures by the authorities.^⁵ The failure of successive governments to guarantee the rights of Romani communities and individuals has been repeatedly documented by Roma and non-Roma NGOs within Macedonia, by INGOs, the Council of Europe and UN treaty bodies.

Macedonia is a state party to a number of international treaties which require the government to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of Romani women, including their rights to education, to work, to the highest attainable state of health and to be free from violence, and to enjoyment of these rights without discrimination. The treaties which prohibit the forms of discrimination covered in this report include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Women’s Convention) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Convention). Macedonia is also a party to relevant regional instruments including the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR); Protocol 12 to the ECHR (which ensures that all rights set out in law shall be secured without discrimination); the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (Framework Convention) and the 1961 European Social Charter.

Each of these treaties also includes a general prohibition on discrimination, and requires Macedonia, as a state party, to take measures to respect this prohibition and protect people from discrimination. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its General Comment No. 27 on Discrimination against Roma, has also recommended a series of specific measures for states to adopt in order to combat discrimination.^⁶

The failure of the Macedonian authorities to meet the obligations set out in these and other treaties, and which oblige them inter alia to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of Romani women, has been highlighted in reports by three of the independent expert bodies (committees) which monitor states’ compliance with their obligations under such treaties.^⁷Amnesty International shares the concerns expressed by these committees.

In 2006, the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) concluded that Macedonia had failed to honour its obligations towards Romani men and women under the respective conventions.^⁸In May 2007, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also found Macedonia in breach of its obligations to the Romani community in Macedonia. ^⁹ In their consideration of the state party reports, both CEDAW and CESCR were provided with reports by Romani NGOs in Macedonia working in conjunction with the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) and others.^¹⁰Observations and recommendations made by the CEDAW, the CESCR and the CERD, in their consideration of Macedonia’s state party reports, are included in the relevant sections below.

The CEDAW, for example, reported widespread discrimination against women in Macedonia, irrespective of their ethnicity, and in violation of almost all of the rights set out in the Women’s Convention.They observed that “rural women, as well as ethnic minority women, particularly Roma [emphasis added] and Albanian women, remain in a vulnerable and marginalized situation, in particular with regard to access to education, health, employment and participation in political and public life.” In a series of critical recommendations to the authorities, CEDAW recognized the interconnectedness of basic rights including to education, health and employment and the extent of discrimination against rural and ethnic minority women. The concluding comments, which called on the government to take “temporary special measures”, reflected the degree of its concern about the situation of Romani and other minority women in Macedonia:

“The Committee urges the State party to implement effective measures to eliminate discrimination against rural women, as well as ethnic minority women, in particular Roma and Albanian women, and to enhance their enjoyment of human rights through all available means, including temporary special measures, in accordance with article 4, paragraph 1, of the Convention,and general recommendation No. 25 of the Committee.^¹¹It calls on the State party to implement measures to decrease dropout rates among Roma girls and girls living in rural areas and to reintegrate them into the educational system. The Committee requests the State party to provide, in its next report, a comprehensive picture of the de facto situation of rural women, as well as of ethnic minority women, in particular Roma women, in the areas of education, health, employment and participation in political and public life, and of the efforts of the Government to eliminate discrimination against these women. The Committee calls upon the State party to provide information, in its next report, on concrete projects directed at Roma women under the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015.”

This report aims to contribute towards that “picture of the de facto situation”, in relation to discrimination against Romani women, by further documenting human rights violations to which Romani women and girls in Macedonia are subjected. In particular, the report provides evidence of discrimination against Romani women in accessing three basic human rights: the right to education, the right to work and the right to health, enshrined in the ICESCR. Under the ICESCR, states are required to progressively achieve the full realization of these rights according to the maximum of available resources (“progressive realization”) through the introduction and implementation of legislative measures, social reforms, action plans and oversight mechanisms.^¹² The report also addresses violence against women as a form of discrimination. The report includes recommendations which – if implemented – Amnesty International considers would enhance the respect and protection of the rights of Romani women and girls in Macedonia.

This is one of a series of Amnesty International reports on discrimination against Roma throughout Europe. It is based on interviews with Romani women, girls and men, with Romani women’s NGOs and Romani NGOs, non-Roma NGOs, intergovernmental organizations and government representatives, and reports by international and domestic NGOs. Research was initially conducted in Macedonia in November 2006, and continued through 2007 with desk research and continued contact with Romani NGOs and others. In some cases the full names of people interviewed for this report have not been used, at their request. Amnesty International wishes to thanks all those who assisted, inspired and informed the organization’s delegates in their research.

The Roma in Macedonia

Romani people have been living in Macedonia since at least the 16^th century, many converting to Islam during the Ottoman period.^¹³Following the creation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in 1945 under the leadership of Josef Broz Tito, Roma were classified – along with Jews and Vlachs – as an ethnic group (etnička grupa), rather than as a nation (narod) or national minority (narodnost).^¹⁴ The Roma were recognized as an ethnic group under the 1974 constitution in the SFRY and the Socialist Federal Republic of Macedonia (SFRM). In 1991 Macedonia declared independence from the SFRY.

In 2001, an internal conflict took place between the Macedonian state and armed opposition groups from the ethnic Albanian community. Ethnic Albanians made up between a quarter and a third of the country’s population, and were subject to widespread and systematic discrimination. The Ohrid Framework Agreement (Ohrid Agreement), signed on 13 August 2001, brought an end to the armed conflict, and resulted in the granting of increased rights to minority populations (primarily ethnic Albanians), and a new constitution which for the first time recognized Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups in its preamble.^¹⁵ This 2001 constitution included Roma as equal citizens with all other “nationalities”.

According to the 2002 census, there were some 53,879 Roma in Macedonia, making up 2.66 per cent of the country’s population of 2,022,547.^¹⁶However, unofficial estimates suggest there are actually between 80,000 to 135,000 Roma in Macedonia, between 3.95 and 6.67 per cent of the population.^¹⁷

More than 90 per cent of Macedonian Roma live in urban communities, in or near large towns and cities in both ethnic Macedonian and Albanian areas. The largest communities are in the capital Skopje and the municipality of Shuto Orizari, a suburb of Skopje built to house those who lost their homes in the 1963 earthquake which destroyed most of Skopje’s medieval Romani quarter. In 1996 Shuto Orizari, or “Shutka” as it is both affectionately and disparagingly known, became the world’s first Romani-majority municipality. In Shuto Orizari the Roma language is afforded the status of a third official language, after Macedonian and Albanian.^¹⁸

Romani people living in Macedonia include several different groups who speak different variants of the Romani language, practice various religions and enjoy differing social and economic status. The majority of Roma (some 80 per cent) speak Romanes (mainly Arlie), but almost all are bilingual, and also speak Macedonian, Albanian or Turkish as a second language.

Macedonian Roma appear to have access to a far wider range of rights than Romani people in other states of the former Yugoslavia. They were the first – in 1990 – to elect Romani representatives to parliament, where they are currently included in the government coalition. Roma are elected to municipal authorities, including in Shuto Orizari. Some Roma are employed in government and municipal authorities, although often in Roma-related posts.^¹⁹Roma also have the right to freedom of expression: there are Romani programmes on state television, two private Romani television stations, up to five licensed radio stations focusing on Romani issues, and five dedicated electronic media outlets.^²⁰In contrast to Roma living in other states of the former Yugoslavia, Roma in Macedonia have not to date been the target of organized racist violence by non-state actors. Nevertheless, Amnesty International and national human rights NGOs have documented repeated incidents in which Romani people have been disproportionately subjected to torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officers.^²¹

However, Romani people in Macedonia are denied access to the full range of rights guaranteed under both international standards and domestic law, and remain one of the poorest communities in the country.B.I., a 43-year-old widowed mother of eight children, four of whom remained living at home, told Amnesty International: “Life is a catastrophe. Everything I own is here – look. We are all living here. Four children, one of them 16 years old, and all we have is one room. It is not a good life: I cook, I wash, I sleep and I work all in one room.”

According to a report published in 2005 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), between 79 and 89 per cent of Roma in Macedonia were considered to be living in poverty (compared to 34 to 39 per cent of non-Roma), and around 22 per cent of Roma (compared to 4 per cent of non-Roma living in close proximity to Roma) were estimated to live in absolute poverty.^²²

Poverty is understood not only to be a lack of income or inadequate access to resources and services but also the denial of all human rights in a manner which excludes and marginalizes people.^²³ For Romani women such exclusion and marginalization is based on discrimination both on the basis of their gender and their ethnicity.

Poverty is both directly and indirectly instrumental in denying many Roma access to basic human rights. Poverty may deny them access to services because they are unable to afford the documentation which grants the right to citizenship or the right to access services. They may also be unable to afford the costs of access to justice when their rights have been violated. But rights are denied not only when they cannot be afforded, as for example, Romani girls may be excluded from education because their parents cannot afford school books or because free transport to school is not available. Romani girls may equally be excluded from education when teachers with stereotyped perceptions of them fail to encourage them to learn. Similarly, while Romani women may not be guaranteed the right to health because they cannot afford the “participation fee” imposed on almost all medical treatment and on basic medicines, in many cases they also may be denied access to health care on the basis of their ethnicity.

No protection against discrimination

Amnesty International is concerned that there is no effective protection in Macedonian law against any of the forms of discrimination documented in this report. Articles 8 and 54 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia guarantee “the basic freedoms and rights of the individual and citizen, recognised in international law and set down in the Constitution”, without discrimination on “grounds of sex, race, colour of skin, language, religion, national or social origin, property or social status”; Article 9 guarantees equality under the law and the constitution, and Article 50 guarantees the right to an effective legal remedy in the protection of these rights and freedoms; however, no mechanism has been established in law to ensure that such remedies can be provided.

The Law on Equal Opportunities between Men and Women introduced on 29 May 2006 prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination “based on gender in the fields of employment and labour, education, social security, culture, sport … both in the public and in the private sector”. It provides for special measures to establish and promote equal opportunities, a National Action Plan for Equal Opportunities of Women and Men, and a Commission for Equal Opportunities of Women and Men. It also includes mechanisms through which persons whose rights have been violated may seek redress. The Equal Opportunities Unit within the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy is responsible for the implementation of the Law on Equal Opportunities, and for monitoring compliance.^²⁴However women’s NGOs have expressed concerns at the lack of clarity about the implementation of the law, and that measures to give effect to the law are not in place.^²⁵

Article 417 of the Criminal Code (CC) prohibits racial discrimination or incitement to such discrimination, and Article 319 of the CC criminalizes the promotion of national, racial or religious hatred, discord or intolerance, but no overall comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation exists. A “Proposal For Adoption of a Law on Protection against Discrimination”, drafted by NGOs in 2005, proposes to “incorporate international standards into domestic law, provide a comprehensive basis for a legal protection against discrimination on all grounds, including in employment, education and access to legal, administrative and public health services and to other services, goods and facilities”. The current draft is applicable only to the public sector, defined as “all service businesses, organizations, associations, enterprises and institutions”.However, the government has failed to consider any drafts, and NGOs have commented: “The failure of the Macedonian government to even consider these bills seriously calls into question the government’s commitment to take action against racial discrimination.”^²⁶

Macedonia and the EU

In November 2005, the European Commission granted Macedonia the status of a candidate country for membership of the European Union (EU). Macedonia is awaiting a date for the start of negotiations with the EU. In the course of this process Macedonia will be required to meet standards set out in the acquis communitaire. Among other things, the authorities will be required to introduce legislation to bring Macedonian law in line with EU legislation, including the Race Directive.

The Race Directive “implementing the principle of equal treatment irrespective of racial and ethnic origin,”^²⁷ among other things prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination. The Race Directive further states, “In implementing the principle of equal treatment irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, the Community should, in accordance with Article 3(2) of the EC Treaty, aim to eliminate inequalities, and to promote equality between men and women, especially since women are often the victims of multiple discrimination [emphasis added].”^²⁸

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which was adopted in December 2000, also includes a prohibition of “Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation”.

The Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005-2015

Macedonia was among eight states – also including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia – which in January 2005 agreed to participate in the “Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005-2010” (Decade).^²⁹The governments made “a political commitment … to combat Roma poverty, exclusion, and discrimination within a regional framework”, aiming to “accelerate progress toward improving the welfare of Roma by including Roma in the decision-making process, and to review such progress in a transparent and quantifiable way”. ^³⁰Governments were expected to “implement policy reforms and programmes designed to break the vicious cycle of poverty and exclusion”. Priorities were identified in education, employment, health and housing, with cross-cutting themes of poverty, discrimination and gender. By including gender, the Decade aimed to address the multiple discrimination experienced by Romani women and promote gender equality in all aspects of participating countries’ National Action Plans.

Governments were clearly warned that the Decade was not a “new pot of money”. According to the Open Society Institute (OSI), “Funding national action plans will need to include the re-allocation of existing resources in national budgets and aligning these plans with funding instruments of multinational, international and bilateral donors”,^³¹ thereby bringing Romani issues into their policies, priorities and practices.

Macedonia’s goals and activities for the Decade were initially set out in the “Strategy for Roma in the Republic of Macedonia” (Roma Strategy), published in December 2004 by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy.^³²This comprehensive document, produced through working groups which included members of the Romani community, set out specific and detailed measures covering 10 areas of concern,^³³and proposed clear structures for implementation and financial management, and processes for monitoring, reporting and evaluation. These structures were never established, and the Macedonian Decade of Roma Action Plan, adopted in 2004,^³⁴remains a poor reflection of the Roma Strategy, providing only for a limited number of activities in the areas of education, health, employment and housing.

A recent OSI report on progress made in the nine^³⁵participating countries towards the objectives of the Decade ranked Macedonia in seventh place, noting that “Macedonia […] lag[s] slightly behind mainly because of their reliance on donor-financed measures as opposed to the governments’ own leadership in implementing the Decade”.^³⁶

Amnesty International is concerned that the Macedonian authorities have to date largely failed to implement the measures identified in the Decade of Roma Action Plan or identity the financial resources to put such measures into practice. Neither has the Macedonian government introduced any measures to address the specific human rights violations faced by Romani women.^³⁷ Where action has been taken, it has not been taken by government, but rather by Romani NGOs and civil society, domestic NGOs and INGOs, and with international funding.

2. Indivisibility of Rights

In this section of the report, Amnesty International examines the obstacles faced by Romani women in accessing three human rights in Macedonia: the right to education, the right to work and the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

Specific obligations related to the rights to education and to the highest attainable state of health have been conceived in General Comments to the ICESCR according to essential criteria. This means that services, including education and health, must be available to all without discrimination, including on the basis of race or gender; accessible to all, especially including the most vulnerable groups, without discriminatory barriers or limitations; acceptable, and delivered with respect and without coercion; and adaptable, in that they are culturally or otherwise appropriate, and of good quality.^³⁸

The organization finds that not only do Romani women face double discrimination in accessing these rights, but also that these rights are often dependent on each other. Denied the right to education, for example, Romani women subsequently face discrimination in access to both the right to work and the right to health. Moreover, these rights are not available to two particular groups of women – those without citizenship and those without adequate documentation.

The right to citizenship

A significant number of Roma living in Macedonia remain without citizenship.^³⁹According to the 2002 census, Roma made up some 4.2 per cent of persons who remained without citizenship. Of these persons 500 (68 per cent) were women. However NGOs assisting persons applying for citizenship suggest that the census underestimated the number of persons affected, reporting that they had subsequently administered some 1,000 applications by Roma for citizenship, 500 of them by Romani women.^⁴⁰

Under the Law on Citizenship introduced on independence in 1992, citizens of the SFRM were automatically eligible for citizenship in the new state. This in effect excluded a large number of Roma who had not held citizenship of the SFRM, including persons who had previously moved to the SFRM from other SFRY republics without registering their presence. In order to qualify for citizenship, applicants were required to have a regular income - thus excluding many Roma. They were required to have been a legal resident of Macedonia for 15 years and to be fluent in the Macedonian language; these requirements excluded many Roma who had returned to Macedonia from EU member states. The costs of an application – between 50 € to 250 € – also excluded many Roma. Finally, efforts were not made by the government to ensure that information on the law was accessible or available to Roma which deprived many, including Romani women, of the opportunity to apply for citizenship.^⁴¹Although Macedonia has since amended the law, in order to address some of these concerns, the costs remain prohibitive, and the numbers remaining stateless is a matter of concern.^⁴²

Finally, despite concerns expressed in 2000 to the Macedonian authorities by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the births of a significant number of Romani children continue not to be registered, thus denying children citizenship.^⁴³In 2005, an estimated 8.1 per cent of Romani children aged up to five years of age did not have birth certificates, while in 2006 up to 6.6 per cent of the adult Romani population may have been without such certificates.^⁴⁴These may include children born at home or outside Macedonia, those whose parents were unable to afford a birth certificate or were not aware of the requirement to register their child.

Access to documentation

Roma who do not have birth certificates or citizenship consequently lack the documentation, including identity cards, required by law to access basic services, including education and health care.^⁴⁵Adults without birth certificates cannot obtain an identity card. Others do not have identity cards because they are unable to afford the costs which, including the purchase of photographs and other supporting documents, amount to between 5 € and 10 €.

Access to the right to work and social benefits, including health-care and social insurance, continues to be predicated on the possession of a certificate of completion of elementary education.^⁴⁶In their 2005 report on Macedonia, the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention stated that: “In theory, medical insurance is available to unemployed persons who have registered with the employment agency office. However, it appears in practice that there is a widespread practice of the employment offices to require that applicants prove that they finished eight years of education in order to register, a requirement that is not stated in the law and that many Roma are unable to meet. The Advisory Committee considers that these problems demand the full attention of the authorities, which should take appropriate steps to revise these practices”.^⁴⁷

Amnesty International shares the deep concern expressed by the CERD in March 2007 that Macedonia is in violation of Article 5 (e) of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In the light of its General Recommendation No. 27, which at 4.1 calls on state parties “to ensure that legislation regarding citizenship and naturalization does not discriminate against members of Roma communities”, the CERD urged Macedonia “to take immediate steps to remove all administrative obstacles that currently prevent Roma from obtaining personal documents that are necessary for the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, such as employment, housing, health care, social security and education.” In November 2006 the CESCR also recommended that the State party “urgently process pending citizenship claims from Roma, Albanian and other minority applicants, and take immediate steps, e.g. by removing administrative obstacles, to issue all Roma applicants with personal documents, with a view to ensuring their equal access to social insurance, health care and other benefits”.

3. The right to education

“I want to be a teacher because I know all the suffering that I went through and I don’t want others to suffer the same things. I want to keep progressing. I want to help other women.”

(S., adult learner, who had not previously attended school, Kumanovo)

Amnesty International is concerned that the Macedonian authorities have failed to guarantee the right to free and compulsory education to many Romani children in Macedonia, who experience the highest rate of exclusion from education in comparison to other ethnic groups. This discrimination affects both Romani girls and boys, while Romani girls face double discrimination – on the basis of their gender (see below). Such discrimination results in some children never attending school, others dropping out during their primary education, and few Romani children entering secondary or higher education. In 2005, UNDP found that 31 per cent of Roma in Macedonia, compared to 8 per cent of non-Roma, had received no education or an inadequate education. In 2007 UNICEF reported that in Macedonia an estimated 63 per cent of Romani children enter primary school; less than half of those complete it.^⁴⁸

The Right to Education

“If we shift the focus from “Roma” to “education”, then we will have more chance of seeing the education of Roma from the human rights perspective … [to see]the right to education as a basic human right.”^⁴⁹

Macedonian legislation

In Macedonia, the right to education without discrimination is guaranteed under Article 44 of the Macedonian Constitution, which provides that “Everyone has a right to education. Education is accessible to everyone under equal conditions. Primary education is compulsory and free.” These rights are given effect in the amended Law on Elementary Education, (adopted 14 September 2004), Article 3 (2) of the 1995 Law on Secondary Education and Article 13 of the 2000 Law on Higher Education. Under these laws, discrimination based on “gender, race, skin colour, national and social origin, political and religious beliefs, property and social position”, is not allowed.

In accordance with the principles of the Ohrid Agreement and under amendments to the Law on Elementary Education, certain government competencies for education have been transferred to municipal authorities, including from January 2007 complete responsibility for primary education and the payment of teaching staff. The Ministry of Education retains responsibility for the curriculum. However, a municipal officer told Amnesty International that “The Ministry of Education has not given enough money [to the municipalities]. The EU also said this when they monitored and reported back on the first phase of decentralization. It is the state’s responsibility to educate… but the problem with the government is that there is not enough money to support education in general.”^⁵⁰

International bodies

The right to education is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and is enshrined in the following provisions of treaties to which Macedonia is a party: Articles 13 and 14 of the ICESCR; Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; Article 5(e)(v) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, Article 10 of the Women’s Convention, and Protocol 1 (Article 2) to the ECHR. The right to education is also guaranteed in Articles 12 and 14 of the Framework Convention, and Articles 7(3), 10(1), 15(1) and 17 of the European Social Charter.

The right to free compulsory primary education

According to Article 13(2)(a) of the ICESCR, “primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all”.^⁵¹ The duty to realize the right to free and compulsory primary education until the minimum age for employment, and for all children without discrimination, is an obligation with immediate effect, and is also a component of the “minimum core obligations” of the Covenant.^⁵²

Article 14 of the ICESCR clarifies that, where states parties have not been able to achieve this at the time of ratifying the Covenant, they should develop a detailed plan to do so within a reasonable number of years. Where this is not possible, given the state’s available financial, technical and other resources, states should seek, and should receive, international assistance and cooperation to enable them to do so. In this case the CESCR has made it clear that “the international community has a clear obligation to assist”.^⁵³

The compulsory nature of primary education has been clarified by the CESCR in General Comment 11, as follows: “neither parents, nor guardians, nor the State are entitled to treat as optional the decision as to whether the child should have access to primary education. It should be emphasized, however, that the education offered must be adequate in quality, relevant to the child and must promote the realization of the child's other rights.” This makes clear that the compulsory nature of primary education includes an obligation on the state to ensure that education adapts to the child, including that it respect the rights of children belonging to minorities. The Children’s Convention places further emphasis on the obligation of the state to ensure that education which is available adapts to the rights of the individual in order to encourage attendance (Article 28 (1)).

Discrimination against Romani children

Under the amended Law on Primary Education, primary education is compulsory and free, and should last for nine years, starting at the age of six with a recently introduced “zero” (preparation) year for five-year-olds, and continuing through eight grades until the age of 14.In this section of the report, Amnesty International identifies the different forms of discrimination which either exclude Romani children from school or cause them to drop out, denying them the right to free and compulsory primary education, and also identifies further forms of discrimination against Romani girls.

No education without documentation

A significant number of Romani children are denied the right to education because they have no documentation. In August 2006, an estimated 400 six-year-old Romani children in Skopje, Prilep and Kumanovo (out of a cohort of 2000 Roma children in those cities due to start school that year) were unable to register for their first year at school because they had no birth certificates.^⁵⁴No accurate statistics exist on the numbers of undocumented Romani children who have been and continue to be similarly denied the right to compulsory education.

The Roma Center of Skopje (RCS), for example, cites the case of a 15-year-old single mother from Skopje who had never attended school because she did not have any identity documents; she was consequently unable to register the birth of her own daughter, who will similarly be excluded from education. While the Roma Strategy clearly identifies measures to address exclusion from education because of a lack of documentation, such measures have not been included in the government’s Decade of Roma Action Plan.

Children are also excluded from school by the education authorities who do not recognize educational credentials of children of the many Romani families who have previously lived abroad. F.S., a 20-year-old woman from Kumanovo, told the RCS: “We were in Germany for five years. When we returned I was supposed to continue school in the eighth grade. The school I was to attend did not recognize my education from Germany and wanted me to instead enter the third grade because when I left Macedonia I had finished the second grade. I did not want to go into a class with children of eight [years of age] when I was 13…. I never went to school again.”

Dropping out: (1) the costs of education

“I wanted to go to school but we needed to pay for food, for clothes. My mother did not have any education. My father died when he was very young. So I needed to take care of myself and there was no money for school.” (Silvana, Kumanovo)

Many Romani children do not attend school or drop out from education because their parents cannot afford to send them to school. This exclusion is in violation of Macedonia’s obligations under the ICESCR, which, according to the CESCR, must be “accessible to all, especially the most vulnerable groups, in law and fact, without discrimination on any of the prohibited grounds”.^⁵⁵ The CESCR has further clarified that a free education should be free not only of fees, but of all direct and indirect charges, which act as obstacles to access the right to education.

Although under Macedonian law primary education is said to be free, in practice there are costs involved. While international standards require Macedonia to provide an education free of all charges, including for transport to school, in Macedonia only tuition is free of charge. Teachers’ salaries are paid by the government, or, since 2007, by municipalities, and then only at a primary level. Secondary education, which is not compulsory, should be also free of charge.^⁵⁶

Many Romani families are unable to afford the textbooks, reference literature, school materials and other equipment for which charges are levied, as well as the costs of transportation to school. Over 50 per cent of Romani women interviewed by the RSC reported that they had dropped out because of such charges or the costs of transportation to school.

In addition, families are often unable to afford clothes to wear to school: a woman from Shtip told Amnesty International, “We have problems in sending the children to school; we have problems to find them clothes.” Another woman from Skopje, B.I., a mother of eight children said, “No money. No money for school. No good clothes. The girls want to go to school and to look good. They want cosmetics and we can’t provide for that. Look at you, look at how you are dressed and your make-up. You look good. Now look at me.”

For some families a child at school represents a loss of family income. While boys may be withdrawn from school to work outside the home, gendered roles within the family require girls to stay at home to look after younger children or to help with the housework, if mothers are out at work. ^⁵⁷A Romani educationalist, Zaklina Durmish, told Amnesty International: “The girls have an obligation to take care of the other children; [even a] girl in first grade knows how to make bread, look for food and keep the fire going”. Other girls worked outside the home, some as cleaners, working alongside their mothers.

Some Romani children may temporarily be absent from school when their families take part in the seasonal harvest. Because of scarce employment opportunities, whole families relocate to other parts of the country to take part in seasonal harvests of fruit or tobacco, where they can generate enough income to support the family for a whole year. This leads to children being taken out of school in September and October at the start of the school year. Older children work while girls are often required to look after younger siblings.^⁵⁸The children then return to school in November where they find themselves behind their peers, but there are no measures in place to help them catch up.

Amnesty International notes that the obligation of “adaptability” under the right to education requires schools to, for example, adapt the timetable or school calendar to ensure that such children are enabled to attend. However, as Zaklina Durmish told Amnesty International: “The kids have to miss school – [Romani people] need to work. NGOs speak with the principal of the school and explain why the students are missing school so that they do not get in trouble with the truancy office. There used to be a programme for the kids to help them catch up on their school work but it was NGO-initiated and the money is no longer there.”

Dropping out: (2) failure to adapt education

Romani children who attend school may also be denied the right to education because in their first years of school they experience language or cultural barriers. These make it difficult for them to learn, and result in low achievement levels, which in turn lead to low morale and motivation – yet another reason why children give up on school. Currently primary schools in Macedonia do not provide Romani children with assistance in their transition to learning in Macedonian, including through Romani or “Macedonian as a second language” classes.

Amnesty International has previously noted (above) that the obligation of “adaptability” under the right to education requires schools to ensure that education adapts to the child, including that it respects the rights of minority children, in this case respect the rights of children belonging to minorities. The Children’s Convention places further emphasis on the obligation of the state to ensure that education which is available adapts to the rights of the individual in order to encourage attendance.

International human rights law recognizes the right of persons belonging to minorities to education in or of their minority language. As a State Party to the Framework Convention, Macedonia is required to “endeavour to ensure” under certain conditions that Romani people as members of a national minority have “adequate opportunities for being taught the minority language or for receiving instruction [emphasis added] in this language”(Article14(2)). This should be realized, “without prejudice to the learning of the official language or the teaching in this language.”As noted by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention “bilingual instruction may be one of the means of achieving the objective of this provision.”^⁵⁹

The Hague Recommendations on Education Rights and National Minorities, which have been explicitly endorsed as a framework for implementing binding obligations under the Framework Convention,^⁶⁰ recommend a model of bilingual education where first language tuition is used in earlier years, and is gradually replaced by the official language, thus ensuring that the realization of linguistic rights in education does not result in segregated education.

The right of persons belonging to minorities to receive instruction in their own language is enshrined in Article 48 of the Macedonian Constitution. However, opinion among Roma on the merits of providing education in the Romani language is sharply divided. Discrimination has led to a lack of confidence in education in the Romani language by educationalists and parents alike, who fear that a Romani education would hamper rather than assist children’s integration: “The system is made for other children, not for “children under the line [of achievement].”^⁶¹

Others strongly advocate such teaching, although few resources for teaching the Romanes language exist and there is an absence of training and qualified teachers. However, Anife Demirovska, Director of the National Directorate for Development and Promotion of Education on the Languages of the Ethnic Communities, informed Amnesty International in 2007 that she wanted to speed up the government’s implementation of its obligations on minority languages.

Dropping out: (3) discrimination and segregation at school

While there is no official policy of segregation in education, demographics more often determine that one ethnic group is predominant in a school, including an almost exclusively Roma elementary school in Shuto Orizari. As a result, particularly following the Ohrid Agreement, there exists a de facto segregation of ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian children, each educated in their own language, while Romani children may be educated with either group.^⁶²At Topankso Polje school in Skopje, for example, where 90 per cent of the students are Albanian, the language of instruction is Albanian. Ethnic Macedonian and Romani children are segregated into two mixed classes in each grade and taught in Macedonian.

However, Romani parents told Amnesty International that at Topansko Polje school, ethnic Macedonian parents were increasingly transferring their children to another school, where the Macedonian classes are described as “ethnically clean”.^⁶³Such discrimination by parents appears to be widespread. In 2007 parents of children at the Jordan Hadji-Konstantinov Djinot Elementary School in Veles reportedly refused to let their children attend classes with Romani pupils; at the beginning of the school year, the school introduced separate shifts for Macedonian and Romani pupils. Similarly at the Braka Miladinovci Elementary School in Kumanovo, nine mothers of ethnic Macedonian children requested that their daughters be signed out of the school because there were seven Romani children in their class. Amnesty International has also received reports that Romani children were placed in segregated classes in schools in Kumanovo, Shtip and Delcevo. The National Roma Centre in Kumanovo also reported that stereotyping of Romani children by both parents and teachers has resulted in several schools preventing Romani children from enrolling or taking classes with other pupils. Romani children also report being segregated within classes, by being told to sit at the back of the class.

According to Macedonian law, parents have the right to choose their children’s school. However, such an apparently neutral policy appears to be having a significant discriminatory impact in contributing to the segregation in education. Under international and regional human rights law and standards, states should ensure “free choice of education without interference from the State or third parties, subject to conformity with ‘minimum education standards’.”^⁶⁴ However, states should also ensure that such decisions are taken in the best interests of the child, and should monitor the impact of laws and policies to ensure that they do not result in indirect discrimination. ^⁶⁵

Direct discrimination also occurs: in 2007, the principal of Avram Pisevski Elementary School in Skopje reportedly told Romani parents that their children “lack basic cultural standards, cause trouble, and have very low grades”. The principal reportedly asked the parents to sign an agreement that if in the next three months their children did not improve their grades and behaviour, they would be expelled; parents who refused to sign such an agreement were threatened that their children would be kept in the same grade for another year. The Ministry of Education is reportedly investigating this case. ^⁶⁶

Such attitudes are prevalent: in a survey conducted in 2000 of 260 primary and secondary school teachers, Roma children were described as lazy, ignorant, secretive, destructive and dishonest; only 8 per cent described Romani children as clever.

Romani children also suffer discrimination at school in the form of racist abuse, ostracism, bullying or physical attacks by other children. One Romani mother, a refugee from Kosovo, told Amnesty International how her nine-year old son was repeatedly pushed off his bicycle by ethnic Albanian children, and told to go back to Kosovo. He no longer goes to school.

Dropping out: (4) Denial of access to secondary education

“[The students] reach secondary school and have ten different teachers; there are no mechanisms to help the children; they just cannot catch up.” (Spomenka Lazarevska, Director, Education and Youth Programme, FOSIM)

According to the Law on Secondary Education, secondary education lasts four years. It is not compulsory. Although by law secondary education is free, charges are levied for almost everything apart from tuition. According to government statistics, some 85 per cent of all children who have completed their primary education enrol in secondary schools, including high schools (gymnasia) which provide an academic education, and vocational schools, which provide practical training for skilled work. According to UNDP, only 19 per cent of Romani children in Macedonia were enrolled in secondary education in 2005. However, according to the OSI, and based on unofficial population estimates, the number of Romani children who enrol in secondary school may be as little as 12.3 per cent of the Romani population.^⁶⁷

Girls again face double discrimination, as compared to both Romani boys and Macedonian girls, making up only around 37 per cent of Romani students enrolling in secondary education (2002 statistics).^⁶⁸

The failure of the Macedonian authorities to guarantee the right to free and compulsory primary education

The ICESCR places an immediate obligation on states to ensure that the right to education is accessible to all without discrimination.Article 28(1)(e) of the Children’s Convention requires states to “take measures to encourage attendance at schools and [reduce] drop-out rates”.

Amnesty International is concerned at the lack of effective governmental special measures or systematic national initiatives in order to fulfil the government’s obligations under international law (to encourage school attendance). Few measures have been taken address the drop-out rate, which Macedonia, in its 2006 report to the CERD, attributed to “[Romani] tradition, lifestyle, religion and customs”.^⁶⁹Further, adequate information is not available on the drop-out rate. While data disaggregated by ethnicity and gender is available on the composition of secondary schools, this is not available at primary school level, although Macedonia has been requested to gather this information by bodies monitoring implementation of international human rights treaties ratified by Macedonia. The collection of adequate data, disaggregated by ethnicity and gender, is crucial to ensuring that laws and policies are contributing to the elimination (and not the perpetuation) of discrimination, as required under the Convention.

Drop-out rates are addressed by a school inspectorate with the power to prosecute parents for not sending their children to school. However, as the educationalist Zaklina Durmish told Amnesty International: “Parents are sent letters requesting they attend a meeting with the teacher regarding the pupil’s attendance. If, after three letters, they do not respond or attend a meeting at the school, then the Inspectorate can take the parents to court, but they rarely do.”

Amnesty International notes that the NGO Dendo-vas has taken measures to address the drop-out rate by employing a Romani outreach officer to work with parents whose children do not attend school. Acting as mediators between families and schools in cases of non-attendance, outreach workers in Gorce Petrov municipality have enabled students to stay at school when financial and other pressures discourage continuing education. Similarly, the National Roma Centrum’s 2006 campaign, “The Key is in your Hands”, produced a promotional, award-winning DVD and conducted visits to over 1,000 Romani families to persuade parents to support and encourage their children’s participation in education.^⁷⁰

Most Romani children drop out after the fifth grade of primary school, at 11 or 12 years of age, when students are placed in classes to prepare them for secondary education. Spomenka Lazarevska (Education and Youth Program Director at the Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia, FOSIM) has suggested that Romani children drop out at this stage because they are unable able to “catch up” – the Law on Primary Education does not allow children to repeat the fifth year.^⁷¹

In 2006 the CESCR urged Macedonia “to ensure free primary education for all children and gradually reduce the costs of secondary education, e.g. through subsidies for textbooks, school kits and aids, and increased scholarships, in particular for disadvantaged and marginalized children, in accordance with the Committee’s general comment no. 13 (1999)”.^⁷²In the same year the CERD also expressed concern about the low attendance and high drop-out rate of Romani children. The CERD urged the Macedonian authorities to “intensify its efforts to increase the levels of education of members of Roma communities”, including through providing financial assistance to assist poorer families in covering the costs associated with education.

The CERD also recommended a further series of measures, which Amnesty International considers would address many of the forms of discrimination identified above. These included the elimination of negative prejudices and stereotypes regarding Romani; ensuring “adequate opportunities” for Roma children to receive instruction in their own language and access to Macedonian language classes to prepare them for school. They also urged the authorities to ensure the provision of training for teachers in the culture and traditions of the Roma, and to facilitate the recruitment of Romani teachers.

Double discrimination against Romani girls

“In 13 years state institutions have neither proposed nor implemented any specific measures towards the inclusion of Romani women and girls at any level of education”. ^⁷³

All the forms of discrimination described above affect both sexes, but girls face further discrimination on the basis of their gender. While this double discrimination has not been adequately documented, the Macedonian authorities are aware of their intersecting effect. However, they have failed to take measures to address the problem. Neither is double discrimination addressed in the Decade of Roma Action Plan, despite specific recommendations in 2006 from the CEDAW and other treaty bodies (see above) to address the drop-out rate of Romani girls and girls living in rural areas in particular.

Gender discrimination has resulted in fewer girls attending school and a higher drop-out rate for girls. For older women, like Nona, aged 75, education was impossible: “Romani girls and boys are divided from when they are very little. If you are a girl, you don’t go to school, you stay in the house. If you are a boy, then you go to school to make you a man. Even when a girl goes to school, she has to get home in time to look after her brothers and sisters.”^⁷⁴

Current education levels among adult Roma betray the results of such historical discrimination and the marginalization of girls. The UNDP in 2005 found a significant gendered disparity in access to education: while 22 per cent of Romani men and boys had received no education or a partial education, 39 per cent of Romani women and girls had been denied education. Further while 94 per cent of Roma aged between 15 and 24 were literate, only 79 per cent of Romani women aged between 25 and 44 were literate, and only 69 per cent of women over 45 could read and write (compared with the literacy of the general population at 95.8 per cent).^⁷⁵

In their survey of 237 Romani women in 2005, the RCS found that just under 30 per cent (71) had never been to school, while just over 30 per cent (73) had left school before they had completed their primary education.^⁷⁶ Only 24 had progressed to secondary school, and three to university. A survey in 2004 of over 900 women by the Romani Women’s NGO Daja (Mothers), similarly found that more than half of the women interviewed, aged between 25 and 45, had not completed primary education. Although government statistics suggest that the percentage of Romani girls attending school has now increased,^⁷⁷the historically disproportionate denial of the right to education to Romani women has had life-long consequences, including in denying them access to the right to work and the right to health, as documented later in this report.

Gender discrimination

The female drop-out rate from education has been repeatedly attributed to Romani parents who fail to value girls’ education and to early marriage. Yet in interviews with Romani women and girls, educationalists and NGOs, the organization found that although this may have been true in the past, such dated stereotyped attitudes were rapidly changing. Amnesty International is therefore concerned that such stereotyped perceptions of Romani girls continue to construct low expectations amongst teaching staff which contribute to their dropping out of school. Some 90 per cent of women interviewed by the RCS reported discrimination by teachers including being told to sit at the back of the class on their first day.^⁷⁸

The common stereotype that Romani parents see no value in girls’ education was, however, undermined by the UNDP 2005 survey which found that while 5 per cent of Romani females were prevented from continuing their education by their parents, some 15 per cent of non-Romani females were so prevented. Indeed Amnesty International found that the mothers they interviewed – especially those whose education had been truncated by family responsibilities or marriage – were emphatic in their desire to see their daughters educated and had actively encouraged their daughters’ education. B., a member of Esma, the oldest Romani women’s NGO, told Amnesty International: “You see the same thing in school, in health, in housing, in work… They think because you are a gypsy you don’t even want to be educated. But we do want to be educated. I have three daughters and they have all finished secondary school. When the oldest daughter graduated the professor who had told her that she would not finish school, apologized to her, he said sorry.”

The stereotype is compounded by the belief that all Romani girls will leave school to marry young, and a number still do. A municipal education officer told Amnesty International, “I was a mentor in the textile high school. There was one girl who was an excellent student, one of the best students in the class. She excelled in all her subjects. She finished two years of [secondary]school. She came to me one day and said she was going to transfer to another secondary school, one specializing in hairdressing. I asked her why and she said she wanted to. OK, it was her choice. One year later she came back and she said she got married and her husband and father-in-law told her she had to stop going to school. She did return to school two years later. It was OK, but she missed two years of school.” ^⁷⁹

However, although the age at marriage has reportedly increased over the past decade, this perception continues; a 15-year-old girl from Skopje told the RCS, “When I was in the 4th grade my teacher Neda used to tell me ‘You Romani girls are used to getting married very early and that’s why you are not interested in learning.’” She dropped out in the fifth grade.^⁸⁰Another girl, I., aged 10, told Amnesty International: “I want to get married yes, but not when I am young. Maybe when I am 20 or 22. I don’t want to have 11 or 12 people in the house.”

Again, it was mothers who, having themselves married young, strongly expressed a desire to see their daughters educated. B.I. told Amnesty International: “I was 16 years old when I got married. My mother had died when I was young. My father made me get married. I did not know my husband beforehand; I had never even seen him. But, in the end, thanks to God, we had a normal life - without any physical violence. My three daughters who are married all knew their husbands beforehand. One was married at 18, one 19, one 20 years old. They all went to school till 4^th grade. I did not want them to get married too young. I did not want them to get married at 15 or 16.”

UNDP found that while 8 per cent of the cohort of Romani girls interviewed for their survey had left school in order to marry, 5 per cent of all girls of the same age also left for the same reasons, suggesting that the margin of difference between Roma and the rest of the population in relation to early marriage has been exaggerated. This continued stereotype is being addressed by Romani NGOs through their work with parents and teachers, who have shown positive results when measures are taken.

There has been no attempt by the government to calculate the numbers of girls who drop out from education, let alone assess fully the reasons why. Spomenka Lazarevska told Amnesty International that although FOSIM believed that there was a higher drop-out rate for girls, they had been able to address this through their four-year mentoring programme. As a result only two or three students in their programme had dropped out to get married. Others may still drop out for other reasons; as Denis Durmish, who supervises and monitors FOSIM’s mentoring programme, told Amnesty International, “girls do leave to get married, but they also leave for other reasons, they just get fed up or they want to work”. As Spomenka Lazarevska stated, “The stereotype is not true any more, but [we have found that] primary teachers retain these stereotypes, even though there is no evidence. Educationalists advise how crucial it is to avoid stereotyping. The state should provide teachers with anti-bias or social justice training.”

Institutionalized discrimination results in few girls reaching secondary school. In the absence of their peers, even high achievers may drop out. M.H., aged 26, told Amnesty International that she had left because she was one of only three Roma at her academic secondary school: “I enjoyed primary school [in Shuto Orizari], my friends were great and we are all still friends. There weren’t any other nationalities, so there was no discrimination at school. Then I went to secondary school in Skopje – the Svetan Dimio gymnasium in Topansko Polje – one bus stop away. Secondary school was very different, they were nearly all gadje [non-Roma]; there was one Roma boy, but I didn’t know he was Roma – he was light skinned – and there was one other Roma girl in the French class. I was there for a week. I talked to my friends and I decided that I would transfer to another school because I was embarrassed [at being one of so few Roma in the school], and so I took a break for one year. The second time I chose a school where the standards were high. My parents told me I had to stay at school, but I had got used to freedom. I made a mistake. I was the only one of three sisters to achieve the grades to get to secondary school. Maybe if I had gone to [secondary] school with my friends, I would have stayed.”

However, other gendered factors also influence drop-out rates including the degree of parental control exercised by some parents who, fearing their daughters’ vulnerability to violence or sexual assault, place limits on their freedom of movement. None of Mirsada’s three teenaged girls attend school, although each finished elementary school; neither do they have a job. Mirsada and her family live in Shuto Orizari, where there is currently no secondary school. At first Mirsada told Amnesty International that she could not afford to send her three teenaged daughters to school, “We don’t have enough money to pay for the bus [from Shuto Orizari] to take them to school in Skopje.” Then she told delegates, “They want more freedom; they will have more freedom, but I don’t want [them] to go to school in the city; it’s not safe for them to go to school in the city; I’m worried that it would not be safe, someone would kidnap them and take /their virginity.”^⁸¹

Higher Education

Only in higher education have the authorities adopted special measures, as envisaged by the ICESCR and the Children’s Convention to redress the historical discrimination faced by Roma which has impeded their lack of realization of the right to education. Since 1996, one such measure has been the introduction of “quotas” designed to ensure that student enrolment reflects the ethnic composition of the population. However, while Albanian students have benefited from increased access to the established universities of Skopje and Bitola, at the Albanian-language Tetovo University and the privately-run South East-Europe University, Romani students have not benefited to the same extent. According to the Macedonian authorities, less than 0.4 per cent of university students are Roma, (2001-2, 126; 2005, 184) as compared to 2.66 per cent of the overall population. Romani girls make up 54 per cent of Romani students, consistent with the 55 per cent of female students attending university.^⁸²

Education and the Decade of Roma Inclusion

Many of the perceptive insights, aims and concrete proposals set out in the Roma Strategy failed to see the light in the government’s Decade of Roma Education Action Plan. The plan sets out four broad goals: “(1) the greater inclusion of Roma population in all levels of the educational system; (2) reduced drop-out rate of Roma children on all levels of the education system; (3) strengthening the capacity of teaching staff and school management to identify and manage conflict situations provoked by lack of understanding of culture-sensitive differences; (4) increased number of appropriately educated Roma teachers.” To achieve these goals the Action Plan identifies a number of broadly drawn recommendations on “short-term goals/activities” to be delivered between 2005 and 2015. The measures inter alia include the implementation of legal provisions on compulsory education; the promotion of education at all levels, including adult education; the establishment of a secondary school in the predominantly Romani municipality of Shuto Orizari; and measures to educate and train Romani teachers, including to provide education in the Romani language. ^⁸³

However, the Action Plan fails to identify clear and detailed timeframes and deadlines for each of the actions and activities it envisages, or the financial and other resources needed to implement the plan. For example, at primary level, there are no specific measures identified to remove obstacles to the realization of free and compulsory primary education. Such measures might include free textbooks, meals, transportation to school and other services to Romani children; the creation of catch-up classes for children who had never attended school; the inclusion of Romani children in pre-school programmes; and the elimination of barriers to enrolment due to lack of documents/registration. Furthermore, no measures are identified to address gender discrimination in access to education.

Although Roma educationalists were involved in the elaboration of the Roma Strategy, the government has subsequently failed to work with Roma in the implementation of the Action Plan. ^⁸⁴ Responsibility for assessing and monitoring access to education by Roma and the effectiveness of educational policies targeting Romani communities lies with one designated officer in the Department of Social Work and Policy, and a ministerial coordinator. In 2006, the Ministry of Education and Science decided to establish a Committee to implement activities envisaged in the education action plan.^⁸⁵

Making a difference

“Within the Roma community there is a question: Why [NGO] projects? Why not government money?” ( Zaklina Durmish)

“Currently most of the obligations under international treaties are carried out by NGOs.” (Anife Demirovska, Director of the National Directorate for Development and Promotion of Education on the Languages of the Ethnic Communities)

Many Roma educationalists^⁸⁶and parents, with whom Amnesty International spoke, were keen to emphasize a number of positive changes, although they noted that, while discrimination persisted, it was less overt. “Things have changed from the past and especially for girls. There has been an absolute increase in minority children in the education system, particularly because of various projects and the Ohrid Agreement. Parents are more aware of the importance of education, and this has been fostered by Roma NGOs.”^⁸⁷