Back Recommendations from the 7th International Roma Women Conference, Espoo, Finland, 25-27 March 2019

Recommendations from the 7th International Roma Women Conference, Espoo, Finland, 25-27 March 2019

The 7th International Roma Women Conference organised under the Finnish Chairmanship of the Council of Europe and opened by former President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, attracted much interest as it gathered more than 130 women, from academia, policy-making, grass-roots associations and NGOs and over 100 followers on the live webcast. The overarching theme was “Access to justice and rights” with workshops on difficult issues such as forced removal of Roma and Traveller Children from their parents, forced and child marriages, preventing and combatting violence against Roma and Traveller women and domestic violence and protecting their reproductive rights and pogroms and evictions motivated by anti-Gypsyism and anti-Nomadism and their effects on Roma and Traveller Women and communities.

The discussions were vibrant but productive and resulted in a number or recommendations amongst which:

  • State assessment of Roma and Traveller women’s access to justice, defining gender equality indicators in National Roma Inclusion Strategies, carrying out comparative analysis of impact of policies and programmes between women and men.
  • Promote ombudspersons’ ability to work ex officio and with intersectionality, including aspects of poverty.
  • Equal treatment of Roma and Travellers before the law, emphasising that culture/tradition is no excuse for violating children’s rights
  • State research on impact and effect of institutional care and placement of Roma and Traveller children and monitoring of the children
  • Compensation of victims of forced sterilisations and awareness-raising about the issue of free and informed consent to reproductive health care procedures.
  • Prevent forced evictions and pogroms through the pilot use of early depolarisation and conflict resolution measures by the local authorities and police forces

The full version of the report in available here

Strasbourg 14 October 2019
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