Ukrainian Roma Refugees: A Neglected Population in Europe’s Response to the Ukrainian Crisis
On International Roma Day, observed every April 8, the world commemorates the Roma victims of the Holocaust and other acts of persecution throughout history, and calls attention to the discrimination and denial of opportunities that the Roma people continue to face today. In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this day requires us to speak against the unfair treatment of Ukrainian Roma refugees in several host countries.
While Ukraine’s neighbors have gone above and beyond to shelter hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war, making a commitment to support Ukrainians must entail supporting all Ukrainian refugees equally and without prejudice. Moreover, the conditions Ukrainian Roma refugees have undergone could very well be violations of European human rights law. All the Eastern European countries that have received Ukrainian refugees are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights, and have obligations to guarantee its protections to everyone in their jurisdictions, including freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, color, “national or social origin,” or “association with a national minority” (Article 14).
The pre-war Roma population of Ukraine is estimated at around 400,000 (likely an underestimate), and at least 100,000 of them fled the country in the war’s first months. Ukrainian Roma have for generations faced deep-seated societal inequities, which left them especially vulnerable in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion: compared to the general population, Roma were more likely to lack valid identity documents like birth certificates and passports, and disproportionately likely to live in poverty and lack access to educational opportunities. Ukrainian Roma have eagerly joined their country’s defense, and Roma organizations around the world have rallied to condemn Russia and call for an end to the war. Nevertheless, February 24th has compounded the disadvantages faced by Ukrainian Roma, due to discrimination they experienced as refugees in several neighboring Eastern European countries.
Anti-Roma prejudice in receiving countries has most notably manifested through denial of essential resources. Last May, The Guardian reported that groups of Polish volunteers that met Ukrainian refugees at the border sometimes refused to provide assistance to arriving Ukrainian Roma people. According to Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, an anthropologist at the University of Warsaw who organized efforts to assist displaced Roma people, “Roma were chased away from reception points [on the Polish-Ukrainian border], where it was said they were stealing clothes to later sell. We also received information that Romany families and groups were turned away from cars and buses offering transport.”
In its article (headlined “Meet Us Before You Reject Us”), The Guardian further asserted that, once in Poland, many Roma refugees could not find stable housing, with landlords refusing to rent to them, evidently on the basis of their ethnicity. As with non-Roma Ukrainians, these refugees tended to be women, children, and the elderly, due to the prohibition on fighting-age men leaving Ukraine enacted early in the war.
According to the article in The Guardian, at least at the time it was published in May 2022, one contributing factor to the hardships that Roma refugees encountered in Poland was the fact that, even while the Polish government opened its borders to Ukrainians, it did little to organize relief efforts itself, and instead left much of the work to private charitable organizations and donors. This not only meant there was little to no accountability for discrimination against Roma people by those supposed to be helping them, but also that the organizations that genuinely wanted to help the Roma were put under additional strain. A report by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, who investigated conditions faced by Ukrainian Roma refugees in Poland in spring 2022, claimed that, in the absence of a coordinated relief effort, “most interventions to help Roma refugees are being undertaken by Roma activists and organizations… As a result, Roma activists in Poland, as well as the organizations they work for, are automatically treated as the people who are supposed to solve the given problem, to support the Roma refugees on their own and to take sole responsibility for their well-being.” This put the organizations under “enormous personal, financial, societal and cultural pressure.”
Lack of coordination at the national level had especially devastating effects for Roma who fled to Hungary, where the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has concertedly sought to undermine the country’s asylum process since Europe’s last refugee crisis in 2015. The Hungarian government spent much less on cash assistance to asylum seekers than other Visegrad countries (Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia), and has failed to collaborate with international organizations like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, so that UN aid couldn’t reach refugees in Hungary. For Ukrainian Roma, government inaction fostered an environment and overall sense of discrimination and exclusion. As British magazine Tribune quoted a Hungarian advocate for the Roma, “short of actually saying it, less than 60 euros a month makes clear that they’re not welcome here.”
Ukrainian Roma have struggled to access badly needed support in Hungary, to an extent not experienced by other Ukrainian refugees. Right from the start of the war, Hungarian authorities prevented Roma refugees from sheltering in Budapest’s BOK stadium and other locations set up to receive arriving Ukrainians, instead sending many Roma to rural locations far from jobs and services. But perhaps the worst acts of bigotry occurred afterwards, when Roma refugees in Hungary attempted to receive the basic services they needed to start rebuilding their lives. A social worker at a center in Hungary’s north, where 80 Roma from Ukraine were staying, was quoted by Tribune describing how many doctors refuse to treat Roma patients or “send them home with nothing but painkillers.” One woman reportedly lost her pregnancy because paramedics took too long to reach the center after she called an ambulance, and later recounted “she could feel a distinct change in tone when the operator realized she was in a center housing Roma people.”
Tribune also reported Hungarian teachers refusing to teach Roma students, and local schools denying them enrollment. Housing was likewise often out of reach, with landlords telling families that they would not rent to them because Roma children “bring crime to the flat.” And, even when they can find jobs, as the center manager told Tribune, “it’s incredibly hard for Roma to find work where their employers actually give them their salary at the end of the month.”
De facto segregation of Roma refugees from other Ukrainians has also been uncovered in Moldova. The Moldovan government rightly received international acclaim for taking in more Ukrainian refugees per capita than any other country in the first months of the war. Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch reported in May that government authorities had an unwritten policy to place recently arrived Roma refugees in separate reception centers from the general refugee population. These included the Manej Sport Arena and, after it was closed in late March, a disused university building, both in Chisinau. Conditions at both were inferior to other centers: Manej lacked heating and hot water, and the university had only one shower and no kitchen facilities. Refugees sent to these sites were, according to HRW, either prevented from going to or not told about alternative locations where other Ukrainians had been placed.
In contrast to the two aforementioned locations, Moldova’s largest refugee center at MoldExpo (the main events hall in Chisinau) has “playrooms and trampolines for children, as well as psychological support, free excursions, hot meals, and humanitarian aid;” HRW noted that the director was eager to show the facility to the foreign press. And yet, a non-Roma woman told HRW researchers that, in two weeks at MoldExpo, she had not observed any Roma allowed in, even though a staffer assured the researchers that there was plenty of space available.
While the Moldovan government evidently took a more direct role in responding to the initial inflow of Ukrainians than its Polish and Hungarian counterparts, even appointing a member of parliament to represent each refugee center, this proved an inadequate safeguard against the casual anti-Roma prejudice that HRW found was expressed at all levels of Moldova’s relief effort. One volunteer at the abandoned university building told HRW that the responsible member of parliament “instructed her to deny Roma refugees access to canned goods and hygiene products stored in a locked cupboard for humanitarian aid items,” with the words “we are not going to give these refugees anything because they steal it.” Police record on refugees at the university had separate categories for Roma and Ukrainians, even for those Roma who had Ukrainian passports. Multiple volunteers who were trying to find housing for refugees recounted reception center staff or other officials making clear to them, apparently unprompted, that they would not accept Roma. Even private host families, which is how most Ukrainians in Moldova have been accommodated, were reported to write “no Roma” on online applications.
The cases of Poland, Hungary, and Moldova seem to be the best-documented examples of wide-ranging discrimination against Ukrainian Roma refugees in Eastern Europe (although not the only ones). The pervasiveness of anti-Roma sentiments, by both government authorities and private citizens, illuminates how this bigotry is a distinct issue rooted in long-standing hatred, that requires a distinct response.
International Roma Day marks an opportunity to renew the call for relevant authorities in Eastern European countries to thoroughly investigate illegal discrimination against any refugees within their borders and to make clear to all authorities involved that any discriminatory actions will not be tolerated. Roma refugees must be informed of their rights and of how to file a complaint to designated investigative bodies if those rights are violated, and state authorities should as much as possible cooperate with representatives of their countries’ Roma communities when doing outreach. Furthermore, international donors might consider conditioning their support for a country’s relief efforts on these or equivalent effective measures being enacted.
Abstract: The article is about the unfair treatment of Ukrainian Roma refugees in several host countries and the prejudice they face due to their ethnicity. It highlights how anti-Roma prejudice has resulted in the denial of essential resources, including housing and medical care, for Ukrainian Roma refugees in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary. The article also mentions the societal inequities that Ukrainian Roma have faced for generations, leaving them especially vulnerable in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finally, the article argues that all Ukrainian refugees should be supported equally and without prejudice by host countries and that the conditions that Ukrainian Roma refugees have undergone could be violations of European human rights law.
Background Note: The Roma and Sinti people of Europe, who have been called as ‘Gypsies’, were singled out by the Nazis for complete annihilation. According to historians, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators, while many more were imprisoned, used as forced labor, or subjected to forced sterilization and medical experiments. Roma and Sinti men, women, and children were persecuted and imprisoned, with a particular emphasis on clearing Berlin before the city hosted the 1936 Olympic Games. As World War II began, the persecution of these groups intensified, and they were deported to ghettos and concentration camps, including Dachau, Mauthausen, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had a specific ‘Gypsy Camp.’ The first transport of Roma and Sinti people arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 26 February 1943, and of the 23,000 Gypsies held captive there, it is estimated that over 20,000 were killed.
On 2 August 1944, the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Camp) at Auschwitz was dissolved, and many Roma and Sinti people were killed in the gas chambers, while the remaining prisoners were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps for forced labour. The experience of the Roma and Sinti people has similarities with that of the Jewish population, as both groups were targeted on the basis of their race and had previously suffered from centuries of discrimination. The Nuremberg Laws, which banned marriage between Jews and Aryans and stripped them of their citizenship rights, were also applied to Roma and Sinti people. Similar to Jewish children, Roma and Sinti children were barred from attending public schools, and adults found it increasingly difficult to obtain and maintain employment.
Despite the heinous crimes committed against the Roma and Sinti people by the Nazi regime, their experiences were only fully acknowledged by the West German Government in 1981, and knowledge of the Porrajmos is only now becoming more widespread.
Author: Benjamin Reicher, Pomona College, United States of America
Photo: Romani prisoners in a camp © USHMM
A group of Romani prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration camp. 1940, Belzec, Poland.
Photograph Number: 74705, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
