UN is worried Moldova has no law on combating racism

The UN Organization is worriedly finding that Moldova has not passed any legislation on preventing and combating racial discrimination in all areas, in conformity with the Moldova-EU Plan, Info-Prim Neo reports. Later in February, the UN Committee for eliminating all forms of racial discrimination considered the official report compiled by Moldova and the alternative report worked out by the Coalition of NGOs promoting non-discriminating policies in Moldova, and issued a series of findings and recommendations. At a news conference on Friday, March 14, the member-organizations of the Non-Discrimination Coalition presented the recommendations of the UN Committee for Moldova. Sergiu Ostaf, the executive director of the Human Rights Resource Center, has said the lack of the relevant legislation, found by the UN Committee, leads to recording very many cases of racial discrimination in Moldova. The UN Committee recommends Moldova to draft annual plans of implementing the Action Plan supporting the Roma (2007-2010.) Finding the low attendance and high abandonment of schools by the Roma children, the Committee urges Moldova to intensify efforts of providing jobs to the Roma, to provide money to the Roma families to cover the expenses related to schooling, to offer special courses of official language to Roma children and scholarships to students, to include the Roma language and culture into the school curriculum. In this context, Nicolae Radita, the president of the National Roma Center (NRC) has reminded that the Roma language is not studied in any school or class in Moldova, and over 90% of the Roma population from the areas monitored by the Center is unemployed. “The fact that the Roma still avoid to define themselves tells that the state policies streamlined to eliminate the stereotypes yield no result,” Nicolae Radita said. Though, the officials talk much about Moldova’s poly-ethnicity, the implemented policies are rather declarative and assimilating, stated the NRC president. At the same time, the UN Committee recommends the state to insure that the children of ethnic minorities study in the native language and to expand the number of schools studying in Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, to enhance the level of teaching the official language to children of ethnic minorities. The leader of the Interethnic Research Center, Igor Pivovar, has remarked that Ukrainian is studied in 57 schools, although there are over 100 localities with Ukrainian population in Moldova. The UN Committee expressed its concern with the refusal to register the Muslim minority by the state, and recommended to insure separate areas in cemeteries to bury the Muslims according to their religion. The UN Committee asks Moldova to present, within a year, the information on the measures taken following the recommendations on registering the Muslim community, compiling annual plans and providing money for the education of the Roma people. Moldova is to present the next report till 25 February 2010.