19/02/2013
Equal Rights Trust
The European Court of Human Rights held that Roma were an especially vulnerable group who had been subjected to a history of discrimination and that the statistics relating to their overrepresentation in remedial schools constituted prima facie evidence of indirect discrimination.
On 29 January 2013, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its judgment in Horváth and Kiss v Hungary, in which it ruled on the case of two Roma applicants who claimed that Hungary had violated their rights under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (right to education) read with Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). The Court found that Hungary had indirectly discriminated against the applicants on the ground of their Roma origin in relation to their right to education in part because its procedures for identifying children with mental disabilities to be sent to remedial schools disproportionately impacted on the Roma in an unjustifiable way.
The FSG welcomes the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which rests on the acknowledgment of ongoing and widespread discrimination towards the Roma with regard to their education "disguised in allegedly neutral tests", and on the assertion of the specific positive obligations of States to prevent the perpetuation of direct or indirect discriminatory practices on grounds of race or ethnicity.