In 2021, the UN Assembly discussed the inclusion of the term “poverty” in the anti-discrimination law, at the suggestion of its Special Rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights, Belgian lawyer Olivier De Shutter. De Shutter pointed out that poverty will never be eradicated as long as it is allowed to spread and restrict access to education, housing, employment, and social services to those who need them most. While defining poverty as a negative stereotype and an obstacle to the exercise of rights, De Shitter pointed out that poor people are discriminated against in many ways, for example, employers evaluate their resumes more strictly, landlords refuse to rent apartments to them, poorer students receive different guide about secondary education even in elementary school, etc.
The Annual Ombudsman Report for 2021 states that the number of complaints for discrimination based on income is increasing among the general population, most often regarding access to goods and services, work, and employment. The poor are the most discriminated group in society, and the Roma community is part of that group. The report also states that the Roma national minority is the most discriminated against: As many as 46 percent of Roma live in spatially isolated and segregated settlements, where housing conditions, communal services, and infrastructure are extremely poor, while the facilities suitable for children and young people, in many, unfortunately, do not exist. They have numerous difficulties when accessing education and health care, so their employment opportunities are drastically reduced. Furthermore, a base data analysis published in the publication Inclusion of Roma in Croatian Society – Base Data Analysis showed that almost the entire Roma population in Croatia (93 percent) has an income below the national poverty threshold, more than half of household members (62 percent) are unemployed, while the share of work paid in Croatia is the lowest among EU member states. The position of children in such families and households also shows rare social inequality and the lack of an essential basis for a natural and healthy upbringing, as well as the realization and respect for children’s rights. According to the aforementioned research, in Croatia, 81.2 percent of children under the age of 15 live at risk of poverty, a large percentage of children live in inadequate housing conditions that in some cases make it impossible to maintain proper personal hygiene, i.e. 78 percent live in damp conditions, 33.3 percent in insufficiently lit and dark spaces, 48.3 percent without a bathroom and 43.8 percent without an appropriate toilet.
A woman’s role, as a mother and a housewife, is much more challenging in such conditions, so the position of Roma women is particularly difficult. In the Roma community, which is largely traditional and organized and structured patriarchally, Roma women hold all four corners of the house, which means that they are far more burdened than housewives from the majority population. They are responsible for the overall care of children, often for a larger number of children, for the elderly and infirm, and the entire household. In addition to all that, Roma women are also socially excluded because they are isolated in their communities due to poor educational results and unfinished primary and secondary school. Eighty percent of them have never participated in any process on the labor market. Without Roma women, Roma communities have no future, and the greatest burden of poverty and exclusion falls on them, said Suzana Kunac, sociologist and activist and the main researcher on the project “Collection and monitoring of base data for the effective implementation of the National Strategy for the inclusion of Roma” conducted by the governmental Office for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities and the project manager of the Croatian Romani Union’s current project “Educated Roma women – Empowered Roma communities!”. Kunac explained how by taking into account all the elements of poverty, a conclusion can be drawn that it creates a closed circle from which Roma women can only escape with the joint, synchronized action of several social actors. At a very early age, girls and women get married or enter into cohabiting partnerships and give birth. It is a kind of initiation into the world of adults. They contribute to the family in a way that through child support and other types of social welfare, to which they are entitled as mothers, they provide certain monthly financial resources. In this way, the girl contributes to the new family she entered by marriage, but also to her old family, which no longer has to feed her and bear other, even minimal, financial expenses for her. With each new child, the contribution to the community through social welfare is guaranteed, but this income is also distributed among more members in a vicious circle of poverty in which there is never enough.
The education of Romani girls and young women represents the basis for their empowerment, stressing the importance of participation in the regular system of primary, secondary, and higher education in the process of building one’s personality, independence, and achieving economic self-reliance. It also incorporates (for now) non-institutional education about gender equality, reproductive health, sexual rights, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, and family planning because these concepts are highly unfamiliar to them. This kind of content is not available to girls through the school education program, they will not find it presented in a complete and meaningful way in the media, it will not be discussed with their families, and they only share the same limited knowledge with their peers, says Kunac and explains: Shedding light on women’s health and the huge changes that occur in the life of girls during the adolescence is necessary for the girls to understand what is happening to them, how these changes influence their overall health, what happens to them during pregnancy, and what responsibility they have as mothers towards a newborn child. Also, pregnancy and childbirth trigger a new whole series of consequences in their lives. Out of ignorance, they enter into marriage or partner cohabitation, and then child pregnancy occurs, which makes them more vulnerable and exposed to gender-based violence. It g is very difficult for them to get out of this situation because they are economically dependent and due to the lack of formal education, they are not competitive in the job market.
The concept of empowering Roma women contains several aspects, such as security, political empowerment, social and economic empowerment, and of course education, for which a whole series of preconditions has to be established for it to be effective. Education represents an upgrade that requires a solid base, says Kunac and explains: We need to solve the infrastructural problems in the settlements, provide internet access, a small clean room where girls can read, write homework and study, enable that they do not have to walk through the mud to school, make sure that they have access to the library, the cinema and other social and cultural contents, and all these segments are included in empowerment. This is also pointed out by Member of Parliament Veljko Kajtazi. Kajtazi regularly visits settlements and tries to solve the position of Roma women comprehensively.
In his speech given at the roundtable “How to escape the closed circle of poverty” held in November 2022 in Čakovec as part of the campaign “Educated Romani Women – a Strong Community”, Kajtazi emphasized that it is important that the Roma community itself clearly expressed, through Roma representatives, their approval of the increased education of girls and that state institutions have become involved, but that he believes that the involvement of local authorities and administrations is still lacking, which is crucial for real changes in the settlements. Representatives of the Roma National Minority Councils at the level of municipalities, cities, and counties, as well as representatives of Roma associations, joined the project of empowering Roma women carried out by Croatian Romani Union “KALI SARA”. After the training, they are increasingly motivated to start the changes in their community regarding child marriages and pregnancies. They understand that without this, the entire Roma community continues to move within the vicious circle of poverty, as young Roma women are moving away from education, and are not able to contribute to the future education of their children. There remains a problem of the local authorities that do not do enough to systematically address the issues that prevent the effective integration of Roma into Croatian society, Kajtazi said.
In some areas, as many as 46 percent of Roma live in spatially isolated and segregated settlements, where housing conditions, availability of communal services and infrastructure, and the furnishing of households are extremely poor. The problem of educational segregation is still present since one-fifth of Roma children in Croatia are educated in completely ethnically segregated classes. We are talking about systematic neglect and exclusion that results in cognitive, mental, and intellectual poverty. Girls from Međimurje are excluded from all cultural and social events, they live in isolated settlements, and go to schools where almost all students are Roma, while 30 percent of them are taught using an individual approach. They have no access to cinemas or libraries, they rarely visit larger cities nearby, let alone visit exhibitions, museums, or theaters. I remember the sentence of an elderly Roma from Međimurje with whom I spoke during the earlier research, who told me ‘You know what, when there is no economy, there is no culture’, which means they would gladly pay for transport to the nearby cities and buy tickets to the cinema, but they have nothing to spend. This adds a new dimension to the concept of poverty, in addition to the economic one. In addition to not having enough money to feed all family members, pay the bills or install a toilet, no knowledge in the house could be passed down from generation to generation that would ensure that these girls understand many life processes, explained Suzana Kunac.
The numerous projects focusing on child marriages and pregnancies, which are carried out by global organizations such as UNICEF, the global partnership Girls Not Brides, which includes 350 civil society organizations from more than 60 countries, and the International Center for Research on Women, recognize poverty as one of its main causes. According to research conducted for UNICEF by the Italian organization Innocenti Research Center and published under the title Early Marriages – Child Spouses, the marriage of underage girls to much older men, i.e. in poor communities in East and South Asia, is considered to ensure their economic future. In poor villages in Egypt, girls marry much older men from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, and in Uganda and Somalia, there are frequent cases where parents choose men employed in the police force as husbands for their daughters, believing that in this way they will get someone who will take care of their safety and family honor.
The perception of marriage, when looked at from the economic point of view, can be seen as an attempt by parents to provide their children with a better life in a new community. Girls, in the absence of other options, accept marriage as the only possible solution because they are not capable of making a qualified decision about their marriage partner or about the implications of marriage itself.
How to get out of the closed circle of poverty when, in addition to material difficulties, there is also a strong social exclusion of poor individuals and social groups? Contemporary approaches to solving this multidimensional issue focus on measures and programs that include those they refer to to avoid stereotyping, but also to use their creativity, strength, and capabilities that they can rely on.
Ideological and worldview ideas must not be the reason for slowing down processes that offer solutions, and it happens that precisely these factors are the reason that there are no major steps forward in solving the key problems of the poor, e
