These days we have submitted two advocacy reports to the UN Human Rights Council, in which we write about ongoing shortcomings concerning the observance of the human rights of Roma minority in Slovakia.

One of them was prepared in cooperation with our partner NGO Women’s Circles and highlights serious exposures of discrimination against Roma women in the area of reproductive health care. We also point out that despite negotiations on a law to compensate forcibly sterilised women in the Slovak parliament – the law has not been passed and the affected women are still waiting for justice.

In the second report, which we have developed separately, we draw attention to:

  • racially motivated police violence and problems in its investigation
  • discrimination against Roma minority in various areas of public life, with a particular focus on the segregation of Roma children in education
  • barriers in access to justice in cases of discrimination
  • discrimination against excluded Roma in access to digital technologies

In our view, the Slovak state authorities overlook many shortcomings in the above areas and are insufficient to address them.

We submitted the reports as part of the ongoing Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – the UN mechanism to monitor the fulfilment of UN Member States’ human rights obligations. It is a process that involves a peer review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. We believe that Slovakia’s ongoing review will take into consideration also the submitted information from us. It will result in recommendations.

Both reports can be found here.