Since the situation of Roma people in Slovenia is not encouraging, this article is divided into two parts – part one describes the problems of Roma youth with regard to the educational system and the second part describes the problems considering political participation.
Roma people in Slovenia mainly live in two parts of the country – Prekmurje and the Dolenjska region. Approximately 70% of Roma children are attending school in Prekmurje and only 39% in Dolenjska region. Only 100 Roma people attend additional educational programmes and only a small fist of them take part in higher education programmes. Primary education in Slovenia is obligatory and free – nevertheless there are facts that prevent Roma youth to take advantage of such educational system. Most common constraints are the lack of appropriate clothes, lack of financial resources, unheated houses and bad hygiene in Roma communities. That is why Ministry of Education, Science and Sports gives additional benefits for Roma youth especially for purchasing educational material, excursions etc. Classes for Roma youth used to be separated but now there’s a tendency towards joining Roma and other pupils. In the year 2004/05 there was 8% of Roma youth attending schools with special programmes in comparison with only 1% of other youth. We can find reasons for that in the weak knowledge of Slovenian language, in specific culture and in socio-economic position of Roma people. The main problem is bad performance in Slovenian language of Roma and for that reason the current strategy foresees the inclusion of Roma children in nursery education at least two years before they enter the primary school.
The situation with adult Roma is the same or even worse and the consequence is a low participation in the political process. Nevertheless Roma people enjoy specific judicial protection under the 1993 Law on Local Self-government. There exists an ordinance of having at least one place reserved for a Roma councillor (imposed on communities with a certain percent of Roma people). This ordinance was imposed on 20 communities; however, only 19 of them are performing this task today. On the 31 March 2007 Slovenian parliament passed on a new Law on Roma Community. Slovenia is now the first and only country in the EU that has a special law on Roma Community. This law actually defines the whole situation on Roma people in Slovenia from their housing to education and employment. On the basis of this law there must be a Roma Community Council established which will deal with Roma interests, rights, situation, culture and international cooperation. This Council could be a possible solution to a problem that arises - even though most of the communes have a Roma councillor today there are other specific problems arising which are similar to those of Roma youth – elected councillors do not speak Slovenian language, they cannot read the necessary documentation and they are consequently ineffective. We hope that the implementation of the new law will help improve this situation.
Irrespective of all the judicial protection we can find many problems Roma people in Slovenia are facing today. Slovenia still needs a shift in political and administrative culture of all its citizens so that non-Roma will be prepared to accept Roma people as they are and that Roma people will be prepared to take part in educational system as they should and not leave school before finishing the obligatory primary stage. In that case the article of the Law on Local Self-government about the inclusion of Roma people will really make sense.
Lina Pavletič – IAPSS (International Association for Political Science Students), Lubljana, Slovenia