Feedback During the meeting the ADC Memorial drew special attention to the violations of the Roma children’s right to education.
On May 21 the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, and his colleagues have met with the representatives of Russian human rights organisations, for example the informational and analytic centre SOVA, “YURIKS”, the Civic Assistance Committee, ADC Memorial. The participants of the meeting had an opportunity to talk directly to the Commissioner, tell about the problem issues where human rights are violated in Russia. The problems of Russian law system, violations during recent cases, xenophobia, extremism, violations of migrants and minority rights were discussed at the meeting.
The ADC Memorial prepared an appeal to the Commssioner on the violations of the Roma children’s right to education. It is well-known that children’s rights and Roma rights in Europe are very important issues of the Commissioner’s work. Many recommendations, presentations and publications by Thomas Hammarberg are devoted to the progressive ideas in the field of children’s rights: right to independent use of all rights, mandatory activities of grown-ups “in the children’s interests”, possibility to initiate human rights mechanisms by children. Violations of Roma rights in Europe attract special attention in every speech by the Commissioner.
We took the occasion and thanked the Commissioner for his concern over Roma rights. This time we discussed the lack of effective legal help – the problem Memorial faced with in the recent case in Tambov.
The Commissioner promised to reflect the problem and our recommendations in his report and recommendations to Russia to overcome law shortcomings which will be published adter the visit to Russia.
The text of the appeal can be found here.