Active Citizenship and Rights Awareness Of Roma In The Czech Republic

The goal of this paper is to question the reasons for low participation rates of the Czech Roma in political and civil society organizations considering such participation is theoretically perceived as crucial for excluded minorities’ empowerment. Issues related to active citizenship and rights awareness are somewhat low on the public agenda compared to overstressed agenda of social inclusion. Although most Roma face discrimination, there is no mobilization process that would lead to significant empowerment when it comes to political or civic engagement. The Czech government in its annual Report on the State of Roma Community in 2007 defines as one of the 3 priorities of Roma integration the human rights dimension focused on equality and protection from discrimination. However there have been no Roma political parties either in national, regional or local elections therefore there are no Roma representative in the Czech Parliament or any other elected body. Furthermore, the Czech Statistical Office does not desegregate votes by ethnicity, so it´s not possible to say how many Roma vote and for which political parties. However, there have been rumours in media about Roma selling their votes to some parties. Such rumours have not been confirmed before the court but further damage the public image of Roma and possibly discourage their participation. There are 52 civil society organizations concerning in various ways Roma related issues. It is hard to divide them into Roma and other civil society organizations since often bigger civil society organization have special Roma programs and often employ Roma. It´s noteworthy that Roma organization the Association of Roma in Moravia came out of a Roma political party, the Roma Civil Initiative. There are other Roma organizations in the field of media and culture.