Roma Rights in Italy: Establishing the Anti-Discrimination Framework*

Claude Cahn - Programmes Director, European Roma Rights Centre

Beginning work in Italy in the mid-1990s, one could not help but be struck by one issue in particular: the overweening paternalism of a vast number of the organisations working on Roma issues. For many in Italy it seemed, the task to be undertaken was to rescue Roma from themselves. There was frequently an atmosphere of self-congratulation which in advanced stages came to resemble the piety of the martyr. It seemed that, since involvement with "nomads" is thankless stuff in Italy, those working for the charities involved with Roma viewed themselves as somehow approaching the saintly. But since the saved are not always grateful to the purported saviour, there were occasional vindictive outbursts, in which the social worker (it was often a social worker) would lose the beatific poise and would lash out in anger at the incompetence and ingratitude of the Gypsies.

Bizarrely, Italian state policy seemed to mirror this schizophrenic vacillation between charity and punishment. The authorities "gave rights" to "nomads" to "preserve their culture", but then this idyll would be disrupted by massive police raids in which homes would be destroyed, their inhabitants beaten and detained, possessions smashed, and hundreds of people sent on their way. Often these raids resulted in expulsions from Italy.

In the most extreme case, a direct evolutionary line could be traced from a charitable beginning to a punitive end. Thus, media attention would begin to be devoted to this camp or that, decrying the deplorable conditions "in which the children live". Public scrutiny would grow and authorities would become engaged. Eventually, police would raid, and Roma would be evicted onto the road or expelled from Italy entirely.

Other, more sinister tendencies have coexisted with and often driven or otherwise interacted with the dynamic described above. Italy has a vibrant extreme right wing, and it has engaged to incite anti-Romani hatred in Italy. Italy also has a rigid and extensive bureaucracy, and it has played a huge role in ensuring the continued exclusion of Roma from Italian society. A massive substrata of unchallenged and for the most part unexamined anti-Romani racism repeatedly intervened in public affairs, driving for example Italy's refusal to recognise Roma as a national minority, despite Council of Europe encouragement to do so.

There have always been dissidents on these issues in Italy, but only in recent years have they begun to organise. One first noteworthy effort was a mobilisation to provide information to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's review of Italy in 1999, which resulted in the Committee's holding, "In light of reports indicating discrimination against persons of Roma origin, including children, in a number of areas, in particular housing, concern is expressed at the situation of many Roma who, ineligible for public housing, live in camps outside major Italian cities. In addition to a frequent lack of basic facilities, the housing of Roma in such camps leads not only to physical segregation of the Roma community from Italian society, but to political, economic and cultural isolation as well."

Other important initiatives in recent years have included:

• Legal action before the European Court of to challenge the collective expulsion of a group of Bosnian Roma from Italy;
• Legal action to challenge a racist action by the Liga Nord in Verona;
• Collective complaint under the European Social Charter mechanism challenging racial segregation in the field of housing, as well as a number of other systemic violations of the right to adequate housing;
• … as well as a number of other important domestic and international advocacy initiatives.

The publication to which these brief notes are a preface is issued at the inaugural event of a new initiative aiming to challenge racial discrimination against Roma in Italy. This initiative brings together persons and groups who have worked, in some cases already for a number of years, to challenge the systemic exclusion of Roma in Italy. With the birth of osservAzione in many ways Italy arrives finally in the mainstream of European approaches to the Roma issue. For the first time in Italy, it is institutionally established, at least for the purposes of civil society, that the Roma issue is one of systemic racial exclusion from society, in need of proactive and engaged anti-discrimination policy and law responses.

Now of course, a government response of similar approach and suitable dimensions is needed. Securing policy and law commitments in this area will be the work of the next period.