National Working Group:
   
   

Greece

Conclusions

 

  • Meeting at the organization under the theme: “Establishment of the National Working group”

  • Decision taken of involving: Ministries, Local Authorities, Roma associations, Mediators – health agents

  • Bilateral or multilateral Meetings between the General Director and:

  • Representatives of Ministries of Education, Employment & Social Affairs, Health & Social Solidarity, Environment and Planning, Internal Affairs

  • Panhellenic Transmunicipal Network for Greek Roma Support

  • Mayors – Members of EFXINI POLI

  • Mediators – health agents

During the Meetings problems, experiences, proposals and conclusions were exchanged between the participants.

 

A brief summary of the above is presented below:

 

In Greece we could summarize that Roma face:

  • Lack of access to social goods (education, employment, housing, health and care)

  • Steretypes and prejudices from the community

 

The situation of all Roma is in general lines most unfavourable provided that they remain the most wronged and marginalized social group in Greece.

 

One problem leads to the other in the frame of an inevitable vicious circle. For example in:

HOUSING

  • Roma live in barracoons, in the waste, without water, toilets, light, in the mercy of meteorological phenomena and epidemics.

EDUCATION

  • The education of Roma is blocked up by factors such as drifts, financial problems, child labour, racism in school, lack of permanent shelter.

  • 65% of them are completely illiterated. (In particular for men above 40 years old and women above 25 years old the percentage 95 % illiterate.)

EMPLOYMENT

  • Characteristics:

    • Self-employment

    • Uncertain and low income

    • Casual, seasonal, outlaw with low acceptances and without insurance

    • Decline of employment as seasonal workers because of  the competition of economic immigrants

    • Exercise of professions that does not presuppose education and professional training

    • Absence from the public institutions

    • Children's work

  • Their work is refused and experiences a new marginalisation.

  • Their exclusion from the labour market is twofolded since it minimizes the possibility of income and intensifies the cutting off from the “remainder social body”.

  • By all mentioned above, we could conclude that the chances for a Roma who does not possess basic skills of writing and reading as also basic social skills,  to find a job, in a competitive labour market are nonexistent.

CIVIL RIGHTS

  • It must be underlined that Roma have many abeyances as citizens.

  • 5,5% of Roma are not even declared in registry offices

  • 10 % of Roma do not pocess an identity card

  • 25% of Roma are not registered on voting lists

  • 50% of Roma are not registered in public registers

  • The above mentioned data feed all other problems hindering their resolution.

  • A non declared child can’t be written at school. The non registered person does not exist for the State.

  • The local authorities exploit the illiteracy and lack of familiarisation of Roma with bureaucracy and do not facilitate the legalisation process. Since they are not registered to their lists they can get rid of them easier. We have again a vicious circle which strengthens the conviction of Roma that the Greek State is hostile against them.

REACTION OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES

  •  Local communities are extremely hostile and do not want to integrate Roma to their region since the existence of Roma in a region entails degradation.

  • Roma are condemned to live in apartheid conditions. In the frame of the attempt of local communities to send Roma away from the region,  they use violence and illegal acts which threatens even the life of Roma.

  • The usual blame is illegality and criminality as characteristics of Roma. Mass media do the same by charging them for dangerous and drop-out.

  • There are charges not only against non Roma citizens but also against mayors who react hostile and violent against Roma.

RACISM AND THE XENOPHOBIA:

  • The presence of Roma is connected with two contradictory stereotypes.

  • There is a romantic and exotic stereotype that presents Roma erotic, full of love for life and music and there is also another stereotype that presents Roma magicians, thieves, dangerous and dirty.

  • These two stereotypes constitute important mechanism of exclusion, since they support the ignorance and not the acceptance of diversity.

  • Discrimination problem is shown as the most serious question to a lot of researches that already has been reported. The last 10 years there is an increase of racist events against Roma acted by Municipalities, police bodies, citizens and Mass Media.

We could conclude that: REJECTION is the dominant attitude of the wider community.

 HEALTH

  • The situation of Roma health has the following characteristics:

  • Low living rate

  • High birth rate and high children mortality rate

  • High chronic disease rate

  • Lack of access to health and care services

  • Bad nutrition

  • Use of substances

  • The situation of Roma health is connected with:

  • housing problems (no water or electricity supplies in their settlements)

  • lack of basic identity documents, making it impossible to claim for basic for basic health care

  • illiteracy

  • poverty

  • racism and xenophobia, stereotypes & discrimination

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