Fundación Secretariado Gitano

The Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) highlights the FSG´s survey “Impact of COVID19 on the Roma population” as a promising practice to help fine-tune policy responses to the pandemic. [editar]

There is no doubt that the impact of the COVID 19 crisis is reaching all social groups, but especially among the most economically and socially precarious populations it is being devastating. Roma people in Europe are suffering this impact with great severity both at work and in all aspects of life. For this reason, the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has just published the 5th bulletin focused on the impact of the coronavirus crisis on Roma people in Europe.

The FRA´s publication reviews different areas in which the pandemic has had a special impact on fundamental rights such as employment, education, housing, as well as the increase in poverty and malnutrition. The European report cites the work that the Fundación Secretariado Gitano carried out during the confinement that took place from March to June 2020. Specifically, it calls “promising practice” the survey carried out by the FSG  druing the week from March 30 to March 3. April, which coincided with the hardest moment of what its called as the "first wave of the pandemic" since the confinement was total and the number of infections and deaths nationwide was at its peak. During this week, FSG technicians conducted 11,000 telephone surveys to p FSG´s programs participants, gathering valuable information on the situation that these people were experiencing and that served to demand urgent measures to alleviate it.

In addition, in those moments of extreme hardship, the FSG launched the Social Emergency Fund "Together with Roma families" in which companies and private donors contributed so that immediate measures could be taken such as supermarket checks or tablets and computers that were donated to young students. This initiative is also cited in the FRA bulletin as a response to the extreme poverty faced by many Roma people.

The FRA closes its study with a chapter on “lessons learned” in which it shows that these extreme situations would not have been so serious if the recommendations that institutions such as the Council of Europe made in 2013 for measures for the inclusion of Roma . It also shows that the social rejection suffered by Roma people and antigypsyism have exacerbated the exclusion of Roma people in many parts of Europe during the pandemic.