GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR (GHM)
MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE (MRG-G)
COORDINATED ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITIES
FOR ROMA HUMAN RIGHTS IN GREECE (SOKADRE)
Address: P.O. Box 60820, GR-15304 Glyka Nera Tel.: (+30) 2103472259 Fax: (+30) 2106018760
e-mail: website: http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr
Parallel Report on Greece’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Update (March 2011 – May 2012)
30 May 2012
This report supplements the Parallel Report on Greece’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child submitted on 3 March 2011 by the same NGOs.[1] It contains comments on the Written replies of Greece[2] to the CRC’s List of Issues[3] submitted on 2 March 2012 as well as updates on cases and information on developments occurred from March 2011 through May 2012. It is submitted to CRC for the review of Greece during its 60th Session, on 6 and 7 June 2012.[4] An additional submission was made on 20 April 2012 by these NGO jointly with OMCT and the Albanian Helsinki Committee: Greece: 502 Albanian Roma children missing since 1998-2002 - Indifference and impunity - An Update on the “Aghia Varvara” case.[5]
CRC List of Issues – Part I
1. Please provide details of progress made by the State party to strengthen the National Committee in its intersectional coordinating role, in particular, regarding its exact mandate, structure (membership) and budget, as well as the specific activities undertaken by this body.
2. Please provide information on the role of the National Observatory for the Rights of Children and explain why it has not been operational since its establishment in 2001.
As the State makes evident in its reply, there is no National Committee while the National Observatory has never been operational even though successive governments had appointed its members. Evidence is its webpage[6] where there is only a description, the texts of the ICRC and of its constitutive law 2909/2001, as well as the report submitted to CRC in 2001 by a group of NGOs and state institutions –but not the report submitted by GHM and MRG-G.
The General Secretariat for Youth (GGNG)’s open call referred to by the State “for the re-establishment of the National Observatory” (as it is written) was made only on 4 May 2012[7] with a deadline for submission of interest of 15 June 2012 – coincidentally the last day of the CRC Session. As a new government will take office after the 17 June 2012 elections, it will be the new Minister of Education’s responsibility to appoint the 5-member scientific committee, which is not expected to take place before Fall 2012. GHM-MRG-G-SOKADRE have doubts as to whether the process will be completed and will lead to an effective operation of the National Observatory as opposed to its non-operation since 2001. They note that, on the contrary, such a body was created on the eve of the previous review of Greece by CRC and is now in the process to be re-established on the eve of the current review of Greece only to pretend that Greece satisfies CRC’s demands. In any case, the National Observatory does not meet CRC’s recommendation for “a coordinating body with adequate authority and sufficient human, financial and other resources to support an effective coordination for the full implementation of the Convention.”
3. Please provide more information on the National Action Plan for Children’s Rights adopted in 2008. Please clarify the timeframe of this strategy, how it is linked to the national development planning and included in the national budgeting and whether it is implemented according to the provisions of the Committee’s General Comment No. 5 (2003) and the recommendations made during the Day of General Discussion on Resources for the Rights of the Child - Responsibility of States (2007).
The State does not provide any answer to this question. This confirms these NGOs’ argument in the previous report that there is no such National Action Plan for Children’s Rights.
4. Please provide concrete statistical data on the effects of the financial crisis on poverty and of budget cuts affecting protection of children. Please elaborate on the measures taken to redress or mitigate the effects of the financial crisis on children, women and poor families, taken since 2010.
Once again, there is absence of data on the effects of the crisis, while most of the measures and programs listed antedate 2010 and/or have no direct relationship with redressing or mitigating the effects of the financial crisis on children, women and poor families.
5. Please provide information on steps taken to establish a centralized system, covering all aspects of the Convention, for the collection and analysis of data on children, especially with regard to child abuse and neglect, children with disabilities and other children in need of special protection, including Roma, migrants, asylum seekers and unaccompanied children.
As the State admits, there is no centralized system for data collection and analysis, nor has there ever been any plan to create such system or even to assign the National Statistical Authority with such duty.
6. Please provide information on legislative measures taken by the State party to harmonize and amend legal provisions which still set the age of majority at 17 years, in particular, articles 150 and 155 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and 347 and 469 of the Criminal Code, as well as any other article which is not in conformity with the Convention.
Articles 150 and 155 CCP inter alia exclude minors from acting as investigating officers or being served legal documents. In both cases, the majority age therein is 17 instead of 18, as the legislator omitted to amend them when majority age was raised from 17 to 18. Article 469 CC defines deprivation of liberty sentences to minors and again has a cut-off age of 17 instead of 18.
Article 347 CC is criminalizing gay sexual relations with minors with the cut-off age again set at 17 (legal age for sexual activities between different sex persons is 15): it is a form of gender and sexual orientation discrimination, as well as a violation of the principle of equality, as extensively analysed in a specialized academic book on sexual crimes.[8] In February 2005, the Greek National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) called for the abolition of Article 347 of the Criminal Code that describes the homosexual male act as “unnatural indecency” and criminalizes it if carried out in an abuse of a dependant situation, but also if done for money (male prostitution) or with a child of less than 17 years (as opposed to 15 for heterosexual relations).[9] Upon GHM submission of this development to the UN Human Rights Committee for its March 2005 review of Greece, the latter included in its concluding observations[10] the following: “19. The Committee is concerned at reports of continued discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation (articles 17 and 26). The State party should provide remedies against discriminatory practices on the basis of sexual orientation, as well as informational measures to address patterns of prejudice and discrimination.” CRC is requested to make a similar recommendation.
7. Please comment on the information that Sharia law continues to prevail over other domestic law in family and inheritance issues for the Muslims of Thrace and discriminates between boys and girls in inheritance matters and excludes their best interests when deciding which parent will become their guardian in case of divorce.
Although Thrace Muslims have the option of taking their legal cases to the civil courts, most do not do that (or are not even aware of that option); the State fails to provide data in any case, just as it does not contest that the provisions of sharia contravene the Constitution and the ICRC. The State claims that it is committed to strengthen the control of sharia based decisions by civil courts but does not provide any evidence of such intention (for example in the form of draft legislation). On the contrary, as is evident in the related part of the interviews by minority candidates before the recent elections (attached below), most minority leaders defend the sharia and oppose any state interference with its implementation: in fact, when a government intention to abolish the judicial authority of the muftis was publicized in January 2012, there was strong reaction by most minority secular and religious leaders.[11]
8. Please provide information on measures taken to protect the rights of Roma children, children belonging to the Muslim minority, children from groups identifying themselves as belonging to the Macedonian minority, children with disabilities, and any other group in need of special protection to ensure that they are not discriminated.
a. Roma
In December 2011, Greece submitted to the EU a National Strategic Framework for Roma.[12] Keeping in mind that Greek authorities are rarely self-critical, its introduction is telling:
2.1. The current situation of the Roma minority in Greece
This particular social group is subject to multiple forms of social exclusion – in the areas of housing, employment, health and education. Conditions by sector are described below:
HOUSING: Housing is the Roma population’s main problem, with the majority living at present in makeshift accommodation. Housing conditions (with 50% of the population living in prefabricated homes, shacks, shanty dwellings and, in general, accommodation of a makeshift nature, in overcrowded conditions and without the basic technical and social infrastructure) are a serious obstacle to providing the Roma with social integration and a decent standard of living. The basic amenities now enjoyed by the entire general population, even in rural areas, are still an acute problem for Roma households, not only in the makeshift structures which cannot be described as a proper home (shanty dwellings, tents) but even in their houses, which are often no more than a refinement on a shanty dwelling, unauthorized construction, etc.
EMPLOYMENT: Most Roma are dependent for their income on employment, which is usually of a seasonal nature and often not covered by the safeguards of the formal labour market. Many households depend on the seasonal labour of just one member, and on the welfare benefits they may be entitled to as large families without means of support. In general, Roma incomes are low, meaning that the overwhelming majority of households live well below the poverty threshold. The overall picture, then, is one of separation from the formal labour market, with the majority of the Roma being trapped in informal ‘black’ employment, without financially viable prospects. The Roma suffer financial hardship and find themselves cut off from the ever more rapid developments in the labour market.
EDUCATION: The bulk of the Roma population (especially the older age groups) continue to be illiterate, and although school attendance is more common among younger Roma than among their parents and grandparents, their involvement in the educational process must still be characterised as insufficient to strengthen and improve their vocational status and mobility. Most Roma children aged 12 and above leave school in order to find work to supplement the family income. School attendance is often disrupted by a change in location, financial problems requiring the children to work, distance from school, racism in school, lack of suitable, permanent accommodation, and so on.
HEALTH: The health problems of the Roma population are directly linked to their socioeconomic profile, living and working conditions and level of education. All these factors lead to disease and ill health, a lower life expectation and high rates of child mortality. Although some progress has been made in these areas in recent years, the needs of the population have not really been met because the attempts made were not part of an integrated approach to make an overall improvement in the adverse socioeconomic conditions experienced by the Roma population.
The report is also telling in another aspect. It its report to CRC submitted in July 2009, Greece argued that “There has been no exact estimation of the Roma population in Greece. Settlement and housing programmes for the Roma of the Ministry of Interior, Public Administration and Decentralization have estimated the target/beneficiary population at between 120,000 and 150,000, while social scientists who have done ethnographic studies on Roma communities believe that that figure may be an underestimate. They estimate that the Roma population of Greece fluctuates between 200,000 and 250,000.”[13] Yet, in the report submitted to the EU in December 2011, Greece reported that “According to a study based on a questionnaire sent to local councils in 2008, designed to map the main sites where Roma were living, the total Roma population residing in distinct and identifiable locations amounts to approximately 12,000 permanently settled families, or 50,000 individuals – in other words, an increase in the order of 8%-10%, given that the corresponding estimate for 1998 was approximately 43,000 individuals (see Annex).” A careful study of the Annex indicates that the municipalities with the best known –for the extensive discrimination and/or persecution suffered- Roma communities, visited by EU, Council of Europe and UN officials and/or mentioned in UN HRC, ECtHR and ECSR judgments or decisions against Greece, simply failed to report on the number of Roma living therein and the State failed to mention that, choosing instead to report to the EU a ridiculously low population figure. GHM-MRG-G-SOKADRE provide characteristic examples of municipalities with missing Roma population data, where sizeable communities live: Ehedoros and Peraia (Thessaloniki), Serres, Kastoria, Nea Ionia (Volos), Patras, Nea Kios and Midea (Argolida), Tripolis, Sparta, Kalamata, Messini (Messinia), Xyrias (Lamia), Agia Varvara, Peristeri, Halandri, Spata, Megara, Aspropyrgos, Elefsina, and Mandra (all eight in Attica around Athens), and Rhodes.