In the past month, Romani camps have been set on fire twice in Ukraine: on April 22, representatives of far-right organizations destroyed a Romani settlement in Kyiv on Bald Mountain, and on May 9, a similar incident occurred in Lviv. Anti-Roma sentiment is beginning to emerge in Ukraine, such as the LOVTSI group in Lviv. Members of this association identify people with Romani appearances on the streets of Lviv and bring them to the police station. The group claims to apprehend Roma when they commit crimes, supposedly in the interest of the city’s safety. However, in practice, the group focuses solely on criminals from one ethnic group. The National Police in the Lviv region, as indicated in LB.ua’s response, doesn’t see these actions as violations of either the Constitution or other Ukrainian laws.
Indeed, Roma are among the most marginalized ethnic groups in Europe. The causes of their poverty can be attributed to cultural identity or history. European society has long pushed Roma away. During the years of World War II, the Nazis intentionally exterminated, by various estimates, between 600 thousand and 1.5 million Roma individuals. On August 2, Ukraine commemorates the Holocaust of Roma on a national level. The date is related to the so-called “Gypsy Night” of 1944 when Nazis burned 4 thousand Romani people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Today, Romani people in Ukraine face significant issues with education, documentation, and housing, forming a cycle that’s difficult to break without state intervention. Now, attacks and persecution have been added to these problems. LB.ua decided to investigate what needs to be done for the integration of Roma into society and what the state is genuinely doing. We also visited the village of Rativtsi in the Uzhhorod district, where the village head is helping Roma gradually improve their lives.
Since 2013, Ukraine has had a Strategy for the Protection and Integration of the Roma National Minority into Ukrainian Society for the Period up to 2020.
Adhering to this Strategy, state authorities were supposed to gradually address the main issues faced by the Roma community (related to education, documentation, and housing). However, officials and volunteers working on this issue are skeptical.
“The Strategy is doomed to failure at the macro level,” says Aksana Filipishyna, a representative of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Non-Discrimination, and Gender Equality.
Her criticism is well-founded. In 2013, the Strategy was adopted not by our politicians’ initiative, but because it was a requirement for visa regime liberalization with the EU.
According to Filipishina, no funds from the state budget were allocated for the implementation of the Strategy.
The Strategy is merely a framework document – based on it, each region developed its own action plan for implementation. Thus, the responsibility for document execution essentially fell on the shoulders of local authorities.
Currently, each region reports as it sees fit. In regions where local officials or deputies advocate for this issue, the Strategy is more or less implemented. For example, in Zakarpattia. However, in regions without such advocacy, the Strategy becomes a formality, says Irina Suslova, the head of the subcommittee on gender equality and non-discrimination of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities, and Interethnic Relations.
“Perhaps in some regions, the Strategy is financed from local budgets. However, in response to my parliamentary appeals to the governors, I received purely formal responses. Practical work on the implementation of the Strategy is not being conducted. Often, they report on certain cultural events, while urgent issues such as obtaining documents, education, and medical services for Roma remain overlooked,” she says.
In order to discuss the Strategy, LB.ua met with Zemfira (Zola) Kondur, the Vice President of the Roma Women’s Fund “Chirikli” NGO. During the conversation, she suggested that we visit the village of Rativtsi in the Uzhhorod district, where almost half of the population are Roma. (Around 2,000 people live there, of which about 800 are Roma).
“This is precisely the example that proves: the main thing is the desire,” Zola said, introducing us to the village head Tetiana Andrus.
The next day, Andrus, a former Miss Lviv and a lawyer by education, was already waiting for us at the entrance to the village council, located in an extension on the second floor of a kindergarten. You can only get there through steep metal stairs leading from the street.
“You’ll have to jump a bit,” Tetiana Mykhailivna winks. In a narrow black skirt and heels, she skillfully climbs the stairs, then onto a cement veranda. An LB.ua journalist follows her. The veranda is full of holes and looks quite unreliable. But a heavy spruce branch rests on the railing. Trees are all around here. And nightingales sing loudly. It feels like we’re in a treehouse in the middle of the forest.
“This used to be a warehouse. We were temporarily relocated here because we gave the council building for a medical clinic,” explains Tetiana Mykhailivna.
The doors to the village council are open. Right by the entrance, there are two green chairs resembling loungers and a huge agave, creating a tropical atmosphere in the council room. Women are working at the computers, and on the wall hangs the flag of Rativtsi with two flags on the sides – Ukraine and Hungary. As Tetiana Mykhailivna tells, usually the town mayors here were Hungarian men. Nobody, she says, believed that they could elect a woman, and a Ukrainian at that.
Andrus was first elected as the village head in 2006. Tetiana Mykhailivna explains that at that time, the Roma settlement, which now occupies two streets, Shumna and Vesela, was illegal. The residents of 75 houses didn’t have documents for their homes and the land. Now the land documentation has been completely sorted out.
“The power company told us that it was impossible to install individual meters for the houses because there were no documents for the houses. Eventually, they installed one meter for 50 houses, in a way that the electricity would even affect the neighboring street. People started blaming the Roma, saying that they were the ones causing the electricity issues. But we managed to solve the problem. First, by a decision of the village council executive committee, we recognized the property rights for families that had been living here for a long time but simply didn’t have documents for the land and housing. After the village council’s decision, we numbered the houses. Now the houses are on the village map. Separate meters were installed on each house. Our village receives subsidies, so it was challenging. We had to find sponsors. Several people responded and helped both financially and with documentation,” Tetiana Andrus explains.
Later, they managed to bring electricity and gas. Before that, as a local Roma resident named Korch told us, Roma families cooked food on makeshift brick stoves.
“We collected about 200 hryvnias, and the rest of the money came from the administration. We dug trenches with our own hands. You should have seen it,” Andrus starts to laugh heartily.
She explains that six families in the village (around 30 people) didn’t have passports and birth certificates. Now, all the documents have been successfully obtained for everyone.
“Most of our Roma are illiterate, and they also speak Hungarian. So, they can’t even properly fill out an application. They come and say, ‘Tanychka, help, give me something that would be good.’ They don’t understand what kind of help they can get from the government and what needs to be done for it. I use my judgment to give them ‘something.’ If there are children in the family or if it’s a single mother, then I understand that the government provides assistance. We fill out these documents and subsidies together. Other people in the village, however, get a little offended. They believe I pay more attention to the Roma. And I explain that they can’t do it themselves, they don’t know how,” Andrus continues.
The lack of documents among the Roma is a nationwide problem. According to the “Vidrodzhennia” foundation, around 40% of Roma in Ukraine lack documents. (Official statistics state that around 47,587 Roma live in Ukraine. Unofficially, the number ranges from 200,000 to 400,000).
Zola Kondur believes that the document issue could be resolved by introducing a special simplified procedure for obtaining documents for a certain period of time. Moldova had such a program for six months. Similar programs were in place in Romania and Serbia. Kondur says that representatives of the Ukrainian State Migration Service visited Serbia to learn from their experience, but currently, there have been no actions on their part.
Regarding housing solutions, the volunteer is confident that Roma settlements should be legalized, at least those where people have been living for decades, similar to what has been done in Rativtsi.
Tetiana Andrus suggests showing us around the village. We step outside and get into her SsangYong Rexton. We drive onto Shumna Street, where the Roma live. The houses here are enclosed by beautiful handmade fences. On the way, Tetiana Mykhailivna repeats several times that Rativtsi is a paradise. For those who have visited the ghettos in Uzhhorod, the village truly looks like a blissful place.
We pull into a small shop owned by Roma resident Korch. He runs the business together with his wife. Korch used to be a village council deputy and a “baron” – a kind of intermediary between the village head and the Roma community. However, during the elections, Andrus, who was running for a second time, had a falling out with Korch and later replaced him with another “baron.”
“They bought me… Another candidate bought me. I walked around the camp, begged them not to vote for Tanya,” Korch confesses. He looks nothing like how I imagined Roma barons: slender and with a shy smile. “As they say, even a horse has four legs, but it still falls. Same with me. But whatever happened, happened. Later, he came and honestly explained everything, well, we’re still friends, right?” he looks at Andrus.
“Yeah, yeah,” she laughs, “now when I need something, I can always call Korch. How many times we drove in his car, taking people to the passport office. Different situations, though.”
Tetiana Andrus claims that all the Roma in her village, except maybe two families, are now employed. However, some have to travel abroad for work. For example, Roma named Pizhu Zoltan is willing to do any job, either in Hungary or in Moscow.
Pizhu is known among the villagers for winning the lottery organized on Rativtsi Day every year. Once, he won a vacation package. However, he doesn’t even remember where the trip was supposed to be because he never used the prize.
“Why would I go somewhere, I’d rather relax at home,” Pizhu shrugs.
His father passed away when Pizhu was 10 years old, so he barely finished school and had to start working. Pizhu insists that all six of his children attend the local school. He says there’s no distinction among the kids there: Roma, Ukrainians, and Hungarians all study together. Teachers even visit homes personally to ensure that children are attending classes. However, most of the classes at the school are conducted in Hungarian.
Aksana Filipishyna asserts that this is a significant problem in Zakarpattia: “Often in reports, they write that so many Roma children are covered by education, the numbers are large. However, during exams, it turns out that the child can’t read or write in Ukrainian. For instance, they studied in a Hungarian-speaking school. Such a person is essentially given a certificate of basic education, which they can’t use to realize themselves in Ukraine. Another issue is school segregation.”
Often, Roma children do not attend school because they travel with their parents to other regions of the country for work. Due to this reason, for instance, Katya’s children – a Roma woman living in a camp in Kyiv, whom the LB.ua journalist had the chance to meet – are not receiving an education. This family came from Berehove for work. The children in this family do not understand Ukrainian.
In Kyiv, Katya and her family live in the forest, but she says that it’s still better here than in Berehove because there’s no work there at all.
“There, there are no roads, the marshes are knee-deep, the kids get sick, but here they don’t,” she asserts, standing barefoot under a drumming rain on the tent. Katya believes that the road to Berehove could have been improved if there was a different baron. She says that people voted for him because he offered discounts in his store. However, the baron doesn’t take care of his people’s problems at all. That’s why they’re better off here – in the forest near Kyiv.
On May 11, the day after a Roma camp was set on fire in Lviv, the Interdepartmental Working Group on the Implementation of the Roma Integration Strategy Plan gathered for a meeting. The meeting had been planned in advance and was not related to the arson. During the meeting, they were supposed to analyze the progress made and consider what else needs to be done to make the Strategy more effective. For some reason, the meeting was held behind closed doors, and LB.ua was not allowed to attend.
Zola Kondur had told LB.ua the day before that during the meeting, she would insist on revising the Strategy and allocating funds from the state budget for its implementation.
So, we asked the head of the Interdepartmental Working Group, Deputy Minister Pavlo Rozenko, how feasible it is to allocate specific funding for this.
He responded concisely, “We will consult. It’s an important issue. Local authorities should also invest resources in program implementation.”
As it later became known, neither the head of the Interdepartmental Group, Pavlo Rozenko, who had previously emphasized the importance of the issue, nor any representative from the Ministry of Social Policy attended the meeting. Furthermore, it was revealed that the working group on social protection and healthcare, formed within the framework of the Strategy’s implementation and being crucial, hadn’t held a single meeting yet.
Despite the fact that Romani camps had been set on fire twice in Ukraine over the past month, representatives of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Regional Development, as well as officials from Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and Cherkasy regional state administrations, gathered around a large table to listen to each other’s reports for several hours. Everyone agreed that the Romani issue is extremely important and that such meetings should be held more frequently. They nodded in agreement and dispersed.
