A key question facing Roma politicians is whether to run as candidates with the major political parties or to push forward with a Roma-identified initiative.
The experience of today's ghettos has many echoes with the past. Consider for example the Stolipinovo neighborhood in Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city.
Throughout much of Central Europe, there are two cities: for the Roma and for the non-Roma. These cities rarely intersect.
In 2010, the European Court on Human Rights had its Brown vs. Board of Education moment when it ruled that separating Roma and non-Roma students in the Croatian school system was tantamount to discrimination based on ethnicity.
The party's platform mixes a left-wing critique of globalization with a frankly nationalist approach to minority policy. He wants to replace Bulgaria's flat tax with a progressive tax, but he believes that all ethnic Turks are just Bulgarians forced to convert to Islam in centuries past.
In the early days, NGOs enjoyed a rather high reputation in part because of the legacy of "anti-politics" from the earlier period. Today, however, NGOs don't meet with such universal acclaim.
One of the major problems plaguing the Balkans in particular is impunity. People commit crimes, and they get away with it.
This incident in Katunitsa unleashed a firestorm of anti-Roma sentiment. Local residents turned their anger on Tsar Kiro and his family. Anti-Roma activists descended on Katunitsa and, though police were on hand to provide security, burned down Rashkov's properties.
Much has changed in Eastern Europe over 22 years. But for the Roma, unemployment levels among Roma remain high. Access to decent education, health care, and other social services is limited. Representation in politics and business is minimal. And discrimination remains pervasive.
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary's National Film Fund has selected "Just the Wind," a film featuring a cast of amateur Roma actors, as the country's ...
GENNEVILLIERS, France — The camps weren't much to begin with: They had no electricity or running water. Grocery carts served as makeshift grills...
It's been more than fifty years since Paco de Lucía taught himself guitar and stunned the world of flamenco as a child prodigy, then went on to develop peerless technique and controversially reshape the boundaries of the genre.
At first glance, the real life Nanni Moretti could appear quite like the men he plays in his films.
It is an idea that Fellini sticks to when putting his vast, multi-colored spotlight on his home city. But like any major metropolitan city, it is only one facet of its massive whole.
I have been privileged to visit two "Untouchable" villages while here on pilgrimage in India -- the first about four miles outside Bodh Gaya in Bihar province, and the other about four hours south of here, in the village of Dumri in Jharkhand province.
The United Nations is faced with two substantial legal petitions on behalf of cholera victims in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The actions could not be more different in their demands, tone, jurisdictions and venues.
Any time Hans Zimmer begins a project, he panics: no matter how many iconic movie scores he has composed, the Oscar-winner fears he'll be unable to co...
Coerced sterilization and castration are in many ways no different from other limitations on individual reproductive choice: they violate a number of fundamental rights, including the rights to health, privacy, and physical integrity.
BUCHAREST, Romania -- What's in a name? An insult, according to Romania's Gypsies who are pushing for the nation's leading dictionary to add "pejorati...
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI listened to Gypsies recount their way of life at a first-ever papal audience for them at the Vatican on Saturda...
GYONGYOSPATA, Hungary — Police detained several members of a far-right vigilante group Friday after hundreds of frightened Roma women and childr...
BUCHAREST, Romania — Teenagers in Romania are widely intolerant of Gypsies, gays and people with AIDS, according to a new poll that called the r...
Commonly called "gypsies," the Roma are Europe's largest minority and fastest growing demographic, numbering nearly 10 million. But they are still largely excluded from political and civic life, battling centuries of discrimination.
Romani girls donned spangled skirts and sexy tops as they rehearsed dance numbers for the annual "Miss Piranda" beauty pageant in Bucharest. As th...
PARIS — Europe's human rights court opened a hearing Tuesday into a Gypsy woman's allegation that she was wrongly and forcibly sterilized at a state...
