UN Commission on Human Rights

Fifty-fifth session

Provisional agenda item 6

Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination.

Oral statement by the Transnational Radical Party, a non-governmental organization in general consultative status

Geneva, 30 March 1999

Delivered by Paolo Pietrosanti

Madam Chairperson,

This statement is delivered also on behalf of the International Romani Union, a non-governmental organization with status of Category II.

Children of diplomats, daughters and sons of many of the distinguished Representatives of States sitting here, tendentially go to foreign schools, wherever they live, wherever the job of their parents brings them. Good mothers, good fathers care, must care about the education for their daughters and sons, and where it is possible, they prefer an education able to transmit and develop their own culture. Since long time diplomats are more nomad than Gypsies: the vast majority of Roma people live permanently in the same place for generations.

Madam Chairperson,

In a country where a quite vast Roma population has found and brought up intelligent leaders, a Gypsy school has been created. In Kolin, 50 km. far from Prague, Czech Republic, a Gypsy school has been established, thanks to the will and the intelligence of the local and international Roma leaders, thanks to the coincident intelligence of the local Ministry for education and thanks to the coincident intelligence of private international foundations.

The Gypsy is always abroad; and her/his daughters and sons have to go to foreign schools.

We do not think that a culture must be preserved at any cost. A number of cultures have dissappeared, live no more but in books and universities: this is the phisiology of the human community. But the Roma people are very far from dieing, from being estinguished: it is known that just a few nations have been able not to disappear even having suffered a genocide, and continuous discrimination. The Roma Nation has been resisting, resists, is growing-up; its members live in dozens of States and mantain their culture and traditions.

The Roma Nation wants to build Roma schools, where children, girls and boys can study also - also - in Romanes.

Should States help this will, this kind of attempt?

No, if it is just for charity, goodwill. States must look at their own interests; moreover, the UN Community should look at the interests of the entire human population.

Well, Madam Chairperson, in the age of globalization, none but the Roma Nation is the most adequate one. And the entire human community has the interest of exploiting such an example. The reason why States and the UN Community should look at the Gypsy example is its adequacy to the world where we all live. It is urgent to conquer the ability and the adequacy to exploit the actual example of a culture living its strong national identity since several centuries, without any will to create an ethnically homogeneous State.

The history of the Gypsy Nation itself cuts through the traditional identity and coincidence between the concept of a State and the one of a Nation. It is because of it, it is because of the interest of each and every individual represented and organized in States that States themselves and the UN Community should help the Gypsy Nation, in a mutual exchange.

It is evident and known that the ancient concept of the state as the coincidence of a people and a territory does not fit the new scene of the world anymore. Economy and information are progressively getting global, and they move and develop across state and cultural borders.

Isn't such a characteristic of the Gypsy culture and tradition and way of life a treasure for the entire human community? It is a treasure which should be in the very core of the current cultural and political international debates.

We are grateful to Minister Tarja Halonen of Finland and to Minister Bronislaw Geremek of Poland who did not forget the Roma Nation. Minister Geremek said in his speech here that the need for defending human rights does not have an end when democracy prevails. That is true, such as it is true that there cannot be human rights out of democracy, democratic institutions, rule of law.

Racism is something which belongs to the soul and the mind of each and every human being. Diversities still produce fears. It is not the psychological racism which can realistically be eradicated: it belongs to the inner soul of the human being. The only solution is the implementation of Right and Law, and of international and transnational political and juridical institutions. Racism has always come out of inadequacy of rules and institutions toward human needs and changes.

It is of specific interest of the UN Community exploiting the political and cultural treasure coming from Gypsies. It is because of this interest that we ask the UN Community and States to help themselves, while helping Roma Nation to create Gypsy schools wherever Gypsies live.

It is for the sake of You that the future new leading class of Gypsies should be helped to grow-up.

Madam Chairperson,

while we ask once again the Commission to charge the Special Rapporteur to deliver a Special Report on racial discrimination against Gypsies, since Gypsies are members of one Nation wherever they live, we ask also the Commission to invite States to invest in culture, and in a culture needed by all of us.

There is a Nation, and it does not want to be a state. Those individuals who are member of such a Nation can, should have a status. The International Law knows already juridical forms in this field - and it is enough to think of the example of the Knights of Malta. The UN system can and should go on creating and looking for juridical institutions able to give an answer to the new needs of the human community.

In the last days a working group charged to prepare the World Conference on Racism and Racial Discrimination has been sitting. We ask a specific item regarding the Roma Nation to be included in its agenda. A specific session, because of the specificity of such a Nation.

Thank You, Madam Chairperson.