România sub lupa Comitetului ONU pentru Eliminarea Discriminării Rasiale

Două rapoarte alternative au fost depuse la Comitetul ONU pentru Eliminarea Discriminării Rasiale care analizează situația din România în a 77 sesiune a sa.
Unul este raportul depus de Pro Regio Siculorum Association, Bolyai Initiative Committee, Hungarian National Council Of Transylvania care este focusat pe teme de îngrijorare ale minorității maghiare din România. Celălalt raport, a fost pregătit de Romani CRISS, împreună cu
rețeaua de monitori locali de drepturile omului pe care a înființat-o și de Alianța Civică a Romilor din Romania. Din acest din urmă raport, pe lângă cazurile și recomandările interesante, reiau un fragment de analiză instituțională a Consiliului Național pentru Combaterea Discriminării:

Although it was the sole institution committing to actively combat discrimination, including against Roma people, few remarks need to be marked down.

There were a high number of NCCD decisions, in the field of employment, education, access to services and public places, which ascertained acts of discrimination against Roma. On the other hand, the NCCD is not using the mechanism to monitor its decisions, as provided by law, in order to make an evaluation of the impact of different measures (warnings, recommendations, fines), nor the way this decision are implemented or if the fines are being paid.

The relative large percentage of NCCD complaints involving discrimination based on ethnicity is not an indicator of an increased awareness of the Roma population on available remedies and protection against forms of discrimination. As the NCCD reports indicate, most of the complaints regarding Roma were submitted by non-governmental organizations or by Roma persons hired in institutions, facing discrimination in the field of employment. Both specialized NGOs and Roma human resources are aware of the forms of protection against discrimination due to their specialized activity. Random members of Roma communities are not fully aware of the existence of the National Council for Combating Discrimination, or of the legal options if they face discrimination.

As a result of the Constitutional Court Decision in 2008, the mandate of the NCCD was limitated: at the moment, the NCCD is able only to ascertain discriminatory normative acts and drafting recommendations, without mandatory decisions which could stop the juridical effects of such acts. This means that discriminatory normative acts are not changed, but continue to produce their legal effects, in spite of their discriminatory content. This practice is against community law, violating the provisions of 2000/43/EC and 2000/78/EC.

There are also certain procedural issues regarding the functioning of NCCD. There is lack of transparency and predictability of the decisional process, regarding the complaints addressed to the NCCD. Moreover, in most of the cases instrumented by Romani CRISS, there were significant delays in making decisions for the complaints lodged.

Between August 2009-January 2010, 6 positions out of 9, within the Steering Board e of the National Council for Combating Discrimination became vacant.
Starting with November 2009, the Steering Board wasn’t functional, since it couldn’t solve the complaints on discrimination cases. This situation was due to the lack of quorum – minimum 5 out of 9 members have to participate to the meeting when complaints are being debated and solved, and the final decisions are taken with minimum 5 votes out of 9.
The Parliamentary political groups were the ones which presented lists with proposed candidates, in front of the reunited Parliament commissions: juridical commission (Senate and Deputy Chamber) and human rights and national minorities commission (Deputy Chamber).
Unfortunately, the political groups didn’t take into consideration, with very few exceptions, the proposals made by the civil society.
Taking into consideration that most of the candidates didn’t fulfill the necessary conditions regarding the relevant activity in the field of human rights, the NGOs, members of the Anti-discrimination Coalition, have appealed these nominations.
The 6 nominated persons were choices of the political parties, according to their interests, and not with the purpose of creating a strong, professional body, which could efficiently solve the discrimination cases in Romania.
Unfortunately, the nomination of some political parties’ members as members of the NCCD Steering Board violates the principle of independency of the institution from any political interference. The lack of expertise in the field of human rights of these persons proves the inexistent interest of the state authorities regarding human rights and the appointment represents only some kind of reward for parties’ members.
These practices only diminish the people’s trust in the activity of this institution. The quality of the expected expertise the NCCD’s Steering Board decreases and the activity of the whole institution will be influenced by different political parties.
For example, in the past years the public discourse of politicians, members of different parties included racist comments targeting Roma. It is hard to believe that the decisions of the NCCD solving the complaints against politicians won’t be influenced by the political membership of the Steering Board members.