Yaron Matras: Do Roma need protection from themselves? The Council of Europe comes under fire from academics for reinforcing prejudice

Almost one hundred academic researchers
specialising in Romani studies have signed an

open letter to the Council of Europe’s Secretary General, Thorbjørn Jagland,
expressing their concern about a recent Council of Europe communication
announcing its new four-year Thematic Action Plan on Roma and Traveller
Inclusion. They take issue with the statement’s depiction of Roma as having a
pre-disposition to early marriage, violence, organised crime and begging, and
say that such suggestions contribute to, rather than confront stigmatisation and
prejudice.

The 93 signatories, all members of the
European Academic Network on Romani Studies
that was set up in 2011 by the Council of Europe and the European Commission,
are based at over 70 different universities and research institutions in more
than 20 different countries. They include eminent scholars such as historians
Henriette Asséo and David Mayall, anthropologists Michael Stewart and Alain
Reyniers, ethnomusicologists Carol Silverman and Iren Kertesz Wilkinson, social
policy experts Margaret Greenfields and Phillip Brown, and linguists Ian Hancock
and Victor Friedman. The list also includes some key figures from Romani
cultural and public engagement initiatives, such as Jana Horvathová of the
Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, musician Santino Spinelli of the Università
degli Studi di Chieti, Rumyan Russinov of the Public Policy Advocacy Centre, and
Traveller activist and researcher Janie Codona MBE.

In their letter to Secretary General
Jagland the academic colleagues criticise the Council of Europe’s
communication
from 7 March 2016 in which it announced that it will dedicate 20 million Euros
to “awareness raising activities at a local level to help curb early or forced
marriages, domestic violence, trafficking and forced begging in Roma communities
by addressing negative consequences of such activities.” They write that this
statement puts the blame for the effects of marginalisation on the Roma
themselves, and request a correction from the Council of Europe clarifying that
the causes of exploitation and victimisation are universal and not inherently
linked to Romani society or culture, and that they should therefore be addressed
globally rather than with specific reference to Roma.

The proposal to sign a collective letter
triggered a debate on the Network’s email discussion list. Those hesitating to
criticise the Council of Europe over the announcement pointed to a need to take
a firm and consistent position against practices that put women and girls in
danger. Fears of racial stigmatising should not, they argued, overshadow the
concerns for the safety of women and girls in all communities, including the
Romani community. Alongside issues of principle, strategic arguments were also
put forward. Some members pointed out that the Council of Europe’s commitment to
addressing issues of domestic violence and forced marriage derived directly from
its
‘Istanbul
Convention’ from 2011 on preventing and combating violence against women and
domestic violence, and that opposing the Council of Europe’s determination to
address such issues in regard to Roma might undermine its overall approach to
the problem. Others maintained that signing the letter
would mean opposing an increasing number of Romani women who are coming forward
to challenge practices such as early and arranged marriage and other forms of
exploitation and abuse. The claim that in Europe practices of early and forced
marriage were confined to certain segments of the Romani population, where
patriarchal roles prevail, remained highly contested. On the other hand, some
participants in the debate argued that there was a need to address violence
against women as a specific consequence of anti-Gypsyism, which gives rise to an
inability of victims to access legal remedy, as public authorities take the view
that “Roma have their own law and we dare not mix in.”

The CoE announced 20 million Euros for raising awareness
locally about domestic violence, forced begging, forced marriage and trafficking
in Roma communities. According to academics this statement puts the blame for
the effects of marginalisation on the Roma themselves.

Yet despite these reservations, the
protest letter, addressed to what is widely regarded as one of Europe’s highest
moral authorities on human rights, received wide support. Members pointed out
that domestic violence is widespread in poor communities, who are also the most
frequent victims of
trafficking and forced begging, while early marriage is usually linked to the
opportunities that young women have to access training and education or to find
paid work outside the home. Framing the issue as a cultural one creates a
license to segregate Roma and to contain them. It also
promotes the view that inclusion should inherently be linked to the adoption of
particular norms of behaviour rather than dedicated to the elimination of
exclusionary practices and barriers.

Contributors also drew attention to a
gradual build up of a focus on trafficking and early marriage in the
deliberations of the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Expert Committee on Roma
(CAHROM). The issue figured prominently at the

latest CAHROM meeting in Bucharest on 2 March 2016, just days before the new
Thematic Action Plan was announced. It was also on the table at the CAHROM
meeting in May 2015 in Strasbourg. Indeed, ‘trafficking and early marriage’ have
been high on the Council of Europe’s Roma agenda since its Strasbourg
Declaration of 2010, when the organisation began to shift its attention away
from Roma political participation and toward a focus on ‘mediation’ projects,
legitimised by the view that Roma show a propensity, supposedly, to voluntary disengagement from mainstream institutions and mainstream behaviour norms (see
my recent article on ‘Europe’s
neo-traditional Roma policy’). But even as a tactical tool, intended to
tempt sceptical governments to support the Council of Europe’s Roma inclusion
agenda in its entirety, the announcement would seem highly inappropriate: Using
exclusionary discourse to promote inclusionary policies can easily backfire, and
there is a real risk that the approach will exonerate national governments that
do not have the political will to implement Roma integration policies, and that
it might legitimise the positions of anti-Roma political parties.

Interesting lessons can be learnt from
the Network’s discussion and its outcome. The first is the encouraging
realisation that an advocacy initiative can resonate well with academic
colleagues without constraining the pluralistic character of the debate or
curtailing participants’ confidence to discuss conflicting points of view
openly, in a way that allows them to benefit from and capitalise on the range of
insights, arguments and pieces of evidence. The fact that academic circles show
a commitment to public engagement and advocacy on issues that surround public
images of Roma also debunks the myth that academia is the

“last stronghold of colonial, paternalist approaches to Roma”, expressed by some

recent commentators writing in support of another recent Council of Europe
initiative, the European Roma Institute. Indeed, while academics have taken a
lead role in this particular debate, standing up against the wholesale portrayal
of Roma as beggars and rapists, there has been deafening silence among the ranks
of the more established Romani activist circles. This is not surprising, given
the fact that Roma activists are in many cases direct
beneficiaries of EU and Council of Europe funds and therefore have less freedom
than academic colleagues to direct open criticism against influential European
policy bodies. The European Academic Network on Romani Studies is finding itself
in a different position. Having been set up initially by the Council of Europe
itself, it was criticised by some activists for failing to allocate a fixed
representation on its elected Scientific Committee for people who self-identify
as Roma. Now it has matured into a body of members who are able to engage in an
organic process of open and pluralistic debate without fear of either internal
splits or external repercussions.

The Council of Europe’s response to the
criticism may well prove to be an indicator of how this organisation sees its
future strategy of engagement with Roma – perhaps more so than its own
controlled proclamations. It can choose to take the easy way out by blaming the
statement on a non-fit-for-purpose communications officer who failed to consult
the Private Office before going public. That would make the Council of Europe
look clumsy and unprofessional. It would also mean that the next communications
fiasco is just waiting to happen. Another option is to dismiss the criticism and
repeat the line of the Secretary General, who is personally
quoted as saying:

“Our strategy gives more attention to Roma women and children who are
particularly vulnerable”. That would risk appearing
complacent and insensitive to the criticism that contends that the causes of the
problems lie beyond cultural traditions.

If, on the other hand, the Council of
Europe chose to take the criticism on board, invite experts to an open
discussion on the proper way to address the symptoms of poverty and exclusion,
and issue an unequivocal clarification that it does not seek to blame the Roma
for their own misery or to legitimise the patronising obsession to contain and
control their behaviour, then it might not only re-gain the respect of its
critics, but also be in a position to tackle head on the very core of anti-Gypsy
sentiment: the perception that fundamental differences in family values, kinship
organisation, and sexuality constitute the major cultural fault line that
separates the majority from the Romani minority.