European Court Judgment Falls Short on Protecting Roma Rights

NEW YORK—The Open Society Justice Initiative has expressed its disappointment with the limited scope of the European Court of Human Rights’ recent ruling in the case Bagdonavichus and others v. Russia, brought over the destruction of Roma housing in Kaliningrad, Russia.

The case, filed by the Justice Initiative on behalf of six affected families, arose from the summary eviction of 43 Roma families from the village of Dorozhnoe in 2006. Roma families were first settled at Dorozhnoe by order of the Soviet authorities in 1956. During the 2006 eviction, Russian officials shouted racist remarks as they demolished and burned houses, threatening to “exterminate” the Roma families. Two non-Roma homes were left standing.

The six families complained to the Court that the demolition of their homes, the forced eviction, loss of possessions and the resulting separation of their families was motivated by racial prejudice towards them as Romani people. 

In its October 11, 2016, ruling, the court did find a violation of the applicants’ Article 8 right to protection of their home and family life under the European Convention of Human Rights, and ordered the Russian government to pay compensation of nearly €250,000.

But the Court declined to consider the applicants’ claims that the government’s actions violated their property rights (under Article 1 of Protocol 1), and their right to be free from discrimination  (under Article 14).  The decision not to acknowledge property rights of the applicants came despite the fact that they had periodically received and paid for public services, and that local Roma families had participated in government efforts to formalize property titles and develop the settlement in 2001 and 2002.

Laura Bingham, a lawyer from the Justice Initiative, said: “Today’s judgment will provide a measure of relief in the form of long-awaited, significant compensation to the applicant families. But the Court failed to bring the full scope of the Convention to bear to address the wider problems animating the applicants’ claims, which stretch across Russia and the region: insecurity of tenure, discriminatory forced evictions and collective exploitation and punishment particularly in the case of Roma communities in many European countries.”

The gravest disappointment is the Court’s failure to consider a separate violation of Article 14 of the Convention on account of the manifestly discriminatory character in the motivation and execution of the evictions and demolition at Dorozhnoe. States must be held to account for racially motivated aggression against Roma communities such as the events in Dorozhnoe in 2006.

Judge Keller, in dissent, agreed with the applicants that, in reality, the Russian authorities’ actions in this case must be considered as a racist act of collective punishment against their entire community.