The European Court of Human Rights has found the Albanian government guilty of segregating Roma and Egyptian children at a school in Korça in the south of the country.
The announcement was made public on Tuesday and found the government violated Article 1, Protocol 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They are obliged to pay EUR 4500 to five families who filed the lawsuit in 2017 by the Centre for Roma Rights.
The plaintiffs stated that Roma and Egyptian children in the Naim Frasheri school make up between 89% and 100% of the enrolled children, despite the fact they are minorities in Korça.
The court found that the government failed to avoid the concentration of Roma and Egyptian children in the school, despite the Commissioner for Protection Against Discrimination asking the Ministry of Education to take action.
But this is not just a problem in Korça as other cities including Fier and Shkodra have similar situations.
According to Albanian human rights organizations, schools in Elbasan are segregated, leaving children from Roma and Egyptian communities unable to access education.
These communities, which remain the most marginalized and discriminated against in the country, face significant obstacles concerning the electronic registration system. Under the new process, students can enrol in public educational institution with a catchment area, including their place of residence.
This is decided using a map prepared by the municipality. In cases where a school has additional capacity, they can accept students from outside the catchment area.
An open letter sent to the Ministry of Education in 2021, NGOs including the Egyptian Roma Youth Movement (LRER) in Elbasan, claimed that many schools, especially those with better infrastructure, filled up quickly with students. In addition to not filling up classes, those with worse facilities had enrolled predominantly Roma and Egyptian students, thus creating segregated schools.
The Ministry admitted that there were problems with the enrollment system, including some roads not being included in the territory map, issues with registration, and other matters related to the place of residence, resulting in parents having to register the children outside of their area of the home.
According to LRER, several schools in the area, including “Sule Misiri,” “Ptolomee Xhuvani,” and “Hamit Mullisi,” are now “Roma and Egyptian schools” in practice. Some classes in these schools are made up entirely of students from these groups.
The Ministry at the time denied that deliberate segregation is taking place.
In the same year, a UNESCO report called ‘All Means All’ found that Albania has the highest levels of segregation in schools in the whole of Europea and the Western Balkans. Segregation was carried out based on ethnicity and those with disabilities.
