Slovakia:Human rights organisations have urged the EU to pressure Slovakia to end the systematic violation of the right of Roma children to education.
Studies by Amnesty International and the Open Society Institute, which are due to be published in Brussels today, show Roma children are placed disproportionately in schools for children with mental disabilities or segregated into Roma-only schools.
About 80 per cent of the pupils at schools for children with mental and physical disabilities are Roma, although just 10 per cent of the population are Roma.
In some parts of eastern Slovakia 100 per cent of schools are segregated, which leads to Roma children receiving a worse quality of education than other Slovak children.
In both cases, the report says, Roma children have a remote possibility of entering mainstream schools beyond compulsory education or pursuing higher education. "Discrimination at this early age contributes to the further marginalisation of the Roma community as a whole," says the Amnesty report, Still Separate, Still Unequal.
The report comes just two days after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that the practice in the Czech Republic of sending most Roma children to special schools for children with learning difficulties contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Czech Republic abolished these special schools three years ago but in neighbouring Slovakia the practice of sending Roma children to schools for children with mental disabilities continues to be widespread.
Amnesty International's report says that despite some efforts to improve the situation in Slovakia, the government has failed to end the blatant discrimination of Roma children. Domestic law also allows wide scope for discrimination.