[WCAR] Europe's highest court hears oral arguments in landmark segregation case

EUROPE'S HIGHEST COURT HEARS ORAL ARGUMENTS IN LANDMARK SEGREGATION
CASE 

Contact: James A. Goldston +1 917 862 2937 (New York) 
Contact: Claude Cahn +36 1 413 2200 (Budapest) 

Strasbourg, France, 17 January 2007. The Grand Chamber of the
European Court of Human Rights heard oral arguments today in one of
the most important cases ever to come before the Court. Raising major
issues concerning the European Convention of Human Rights'
prohibition against discrimination in Article 14, the case gives the
continent's highest court one last chance to make clear that racial
segregation has no place in 21st century Europe. 

The Grand Chamber, the supreme judicial body of Europe, will rule on
a case launched eight years ago by 18 Roma children forced to attend
racially segregated schools in the Czech Republic. Its ruling is
particularly significant now, as Europe grapples with the
implications of its rapidly growing ethnic, racial and religious
diversity. 

The case, D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic, is the first
challenge at the European level to the practice of educational
discrimination-widespread throughout Central and South East Europe-in
which Roma children are routinely placed in schools for the mentally
disabled regardless of their actual intellectual abilities. The case
commenced in the Czech court system in 1999, and was first brought
before the Strasbourg Court in 2000. In February 2006, the Court's
Second Section ruled that although the Roma children suffered from a
pattern of adverse treatment, the applicants had not proved the Czech
government's intent to discriminate. 

In their arguments before the Court, the applicants contended that
the Second Section's restrictive reading of the concept of
discrimination is inconsistent with the European Court's previous
jurisprudence and the dominant trends in other leading courts in
Europe and beyond. If allowed to stand, it would render the
protection given by Article 14 theoretical and illusory. The case of
D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic presents a particularly
compelling illustration of this crabbed interpretation of the
non-discrimination guarantee, because it involves overwhelming
evidence that Roma have been treated less favourably than similarly
situated non-Roma for no objective and justifiable reason. The
evidence includes: (i) actual admissions by the Czech government that
disproportionate numbers of Roma were sent to special schools-on the
basis of tests conceived for non-Roma-even though they were average
or above average in development; (ii) corroborating detailed and
comprehensive statistical evidence that Roma in the city 
of Ostrava are routinely subjected to educational segregation and
discrimination; and (iii) consistent findings by numerous
inter-governmental bodies concerning discriminatory patterns in
schools throughout the Czech Republic as a whole. 

The Grand Chamber is expected to render its judgment later this year.


Documents related to the case, including the applicants' written
submission to the Grand Chamber, the applicants' request for Grand
Chamber referral, the Czech government's written observations before
the Grand Chamber, and the submissions of third party amici curae
before the Grand Chamber are available at:
http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=102627 





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