Focus ROMI.HR

Crisis are showing how a country is treating its citizens and especially highlight inequalities between them. During most crisis, minorities are often the most vulnerable population due to the fact that they are considered as exceptions by public authorities. But is there a scale of minorities? Are they any hierarchization of the government when they are starting to give them support? 

The pandemic of COVID-19 changes our global system. It put societies in an emergency status.  In France, the president Emmanuel Macron visited centers for homeless people two weeks after the start of the lockdown but not slums. On the French territory more than 22,186 people are living in shantytowns or slums, an area in or on the edge of a city, in which poor people live in small, inadequate houses without basics safety conditions. Most of them are part of the Roma population.

In a country like France the start of the lockdown in March 2020 resulted with the restriction of movement: only essential purchases are possible, barrier gestures must be observed, any infected person should be isolated and only essential works for the continuity for the life of the French country can continue.

How Roma population living in crowded rooms with their families can protect themselves from the virus?  The answer is simple: they cannot. Roma population cannot isolate infected people due to large population of their camp. If even before the epidemy the respect of hygienic conditions was difficult, the situation during the lockdown was worst because of the lack of watering places. Again, crisis after crisis, shantytowns are the forgotten ones in these emergency situations. In effect, if the warning of no access to water in the vicinity of Roma camps has been renewed many times by French associations, since the noble heatwaves during last summers, this request was once again renewed during the national confinement. If the fundamental right to water was not respected before, the pandemic makes it more difficult. In effect, some families have to go several times each day to get water. The CNDH Collectif National des Droits Humains (National Collective for Human Rights) Romeurop, a grouping of 50 French associations and local communities defending the rights of Roma people who define them as “people from Eastern Europe, Roma or presumed Roma, living in shantytowns, squats or other places of survival” France estimated that 80% of French shantytowns have no access to clean water.

It is after the six first weeks of lockdown and the work of many associations and newspapers that water supply’s locations have been finally installed in many municipalities. 

In addition, another long-term consequence of the pandemic is inequality in education. In effect, Roma children, like others children in France, were obliged to return home during scholar time and studying online. If for some parents it was just a simple return to the past on the school benches, for many members of minorities, including Roma people, this event was tragic. In Europe only 3% of Roma children were following online classes during the pandemic according to the NGO Caritas Romania’s research. In effect, proper conditions to follow classes were not in place for Roma children. The large majority of Roma children are leaving in shantytowns with a lack of Internet. Not much electricity or not electricity at all. Only one computer for a large number of children.  Plus, despite online learning, children had to complete their homework alone without teacher’s help. However, most Roma parents don't have the same education as their children and cannot help them to understand their courses. In fact, 38% of Roma children had to work by themselves on the worksheets provided by teachers, versus 19% in the case of other marginalized groups. Are these children condemned to their fate? Without general education and learning of society’s codes, those children will not be able, in the future, to integrate themselves in society.

In another hand, the third vital question is the unemployment. In France, the COVID-19 lockdown means that only people working in activities essential to the continuity of the life of the French state-country can work. Due to that restriction, many Roma people got unemployed and lost their only income source. However, most of the Roma people are excluded from the formal economy or in the grey economy (find a graphic on Roma professions) and just had precarious employments contracts. For instance, the people that are selling on the streets or begging money there, couldn’t anymore due to the lockdown and lost their only resource. As a consequence of their absence of formal work contract, Roma in France workers were excluded from the general social prestation’s like partial unemployment indemnity awarded to French nationals who were unable to work during confinement.

COVID-19 crisis showed one more time the shortcomings of the systems and the way they treat the most vulnerable minorities in these periods, in particular the Roma community. The protection mechanisms put in place are all too often exclusionary, leaving inhabitants of shantytowns without any help. All too often, it's the citizens themselves and the associations that take over from the government to help these minorities. Calls for help have not been heard of or lately. The pandemic showed that citizen and volunteer mobilization has brought about improvements and humanitarian movements for minorities conditions during the pandemic. Nevertheless, after the end of the confinement, a lot of French volunteers went back to their regular work. While all the world is going back to their lives and retired elderly volunteers asked to protect themselves by staying at home, the number of beneficiaries is growing and the associations are worried. 

The rarity of volunteering work may lead to some selection of the beneficiaries and discrimination during normal times. If the pandemic demonstrates a surge of solidarity from French citizens will the movement will continue in their daily life? Will the government use this crisis to improve their help to Roma people and minorities in general?