We wrote to the Minister of Health and urged her to take measures to eliminate the widespread discrimination that Roma women have long faced in reproductive health care.

We drew her attention to the fact that our monitoring in eastern Slovakia continues to routinely document various manifestations of mistreatment of Roma women in maternity wards, including their placement in segregated “Roma rooms.” Despite the fact that we have been drawing attention to these manifestations for many years, the responsible state authorities have so far failed to take effective measures to eliminate them.

In our appeal, we also bring to the attention of the Minister our 2017 research report Vakeras Zorales, which at the time sparked a public debate on discrimination against Roma women in reproductive health care. We point out that our recommendations from this report remain relevant – the Ministry must pay attention to them and translate them into concrete measures.

We have also called on the Minister to advocate from her position for the adoption of a law to compensate forcibly sterilised women, a draft of which is currently being debated in Parliament.

The call is available in Slovak language here: https://poradna-prava.sk/spravy-instituciam/