In the last five years, Moldova made some progress to fight racism and racial discrimination, however there are no coherent statistical data that could be used to comprehensively evaluate the scale of the problem. This is one of the conclusions of a report published today by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), IPN reports.
Since the publication of the previous report in December 2008, ECRI found that the Moldovan authorities have demonstrated their willingness to undertake major reforms, including the justice sector reform.
In particular, ECRI welcomes such positive developments as the adoption of the Law on Equality; the reform of the Ombudsman institution; support for the Roma ethnic group by means of an action plan; the registration of the great majority of the minority religious groups, including a Muslim community etc.
At the same time, ECRI identified a number of shortcomings. For example, there are still a considerable number of people belonging to ethnic minorities who have not been registered with a municipality and many of them have not obtained Moldovan nationality or identity documents. The police are reluctant to register complaints of racism and racial discrimination and initiate investigations, sand there are still a significant number of cases of police misconduct.
Concerning the issue of intolerant attitudes formation within Moldovan society, the European organization noted the role of certain officials and leading politicians, and remarked the “considerable political influence” often exerted by the Orthodox Church.
The report devotes particular attention to the situation of the Roma population. It states that the Roma “come up against considerable prejudice” in various areas, and this has multiple negative effects, such as the low enrollment rates in pre-school and school education and educational segregation among the Roma children, or discrimination in employment against the Roma, their under-representation in the public sector and the intolerant attitudes against the Roma in the public health system.
Concerning education, ECRI welcomes the positive results of the piloted efforts to teach a number of subjects in Romanian in some Russian-speaking schools. „As learning of the official language is essential for ethnic minorities to have access to all areas of society, ECRI encourages the authorities to extend this practice quickly to other schools teaching in one of the minority languages,” recommends the report.
In its recommendations, ECRI highlights the need to set up a system for monitoring racist incidents and for systematically collecting data on vulnerable groups. Also the relevant authorities are recommended to “deal seriously with all allegations of racism and racial discrimination and carry out effective investigations with a view to providing appropriate redress and punishment”.
ECRI is a human rights body of the Council of Europe, composed of independent experts, which monitors problems of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, intolerance and discrimination; it prepares reports and issues recommendations to member States.
