12 Aug 2007

Europe's Roma Outsiders

The Roma are one of Europe's largest stateless communities. Estimates suggest up to eight and a half million people belong to the Roma.

They have no country to live in, and are consequently disadvantaged and marginalised. A significant number of Roma do not have citizenship of the countries they live in.


Emily is 19 and believes she may have tuberculosis. In the ghetto the disease is endemic.
She is pregnant and her family has yet to build the wooden shack where she will give birth and live with her new-born child. The children we meet are undernourished and vulnerable to abuse and disease.
Monika Milanova has five children. Three have pneumonia. Little Lieubeeka, her youngest child, is clearly undernourished. Her health worker says she has rickets.
"The children get sick and we have no supplies to look after them – in the winter it freezes and in the summer we are fried like chickens - we can't stand it," Milonova says.
There have been efforts at re-housing but they came to nothing. The stateless continue to be homeless.

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For background see Wikipedia