LIVE BROADCAST FROM PRAGUE AT 16:30 CET of a panel discussion on the forced sterilization of Romani women: History, impact, compensation
On Thursday, 21 September at 16:30 CET the Centre for Roma and Sinti in Prague will hold yet another discussion panel as part of its "Romani Women, Past and Present" series. The subject will be "Forced sterilization of Romani (and other) women - efforts to compensate victims and end this practice".
ROMEA TV will broadcast the event live online. “The debate in September will concentrate on several questions about the practices of discrimination against Romani women in the in the field of gynecology, narrowed down to the forced sterilizations in the Czech Republic and previously in Czechoslovakia on the basis of their ascribed ethnicity or alleged social disadvantage,” the Museum of Romani Culture, of which the Centre for the Roma and Sinti in Prague is a part, said in an invitation sent to news server Romea.cz.
According to the organizers, the debate will be dedicated to the question of when and on what basis this practice began. It will present the impacts of these practices on the lives of the forcibly sterilized women as well as the development of civil society activities aiming to end these practices and subsequently to compensate the women affected by forced sterilization.
Illegal sterilizations were performed in Czechoslovakia and then in the Czech Republic from the end of the 1960s to the year 2010 at least. Many of those sterilized were Romani women.
In January 2022, after 18 years of activists and human rights organizations struggling to achieve it, a law took effect that compensates unlawfully sterilized persons. The experience of Romani women applying for this compensation will also be discussed, how it is being handled and what new problems the applicants face, what kind of aid they can count on and how it is organized.
The debate will feature Elena Gorolová, an activist and social worker who advocates for the rights of Romani women; Gwendolyn Albert, an independent activist and researcher in the field of human rights; Ruben Pellar, an activist, linguist and translator; and Anna Štefanidesová, the lawyer who is the statutory representative of the League of Human Rights in the Czech Republic. Lada Viková, the university educator who edits the academic journal Romano džaniben, will moderate.
The discussion series is part of the Centre for the Roma and Sinti in Prague’s auxiliary programming and is supported by Norway Grants 2014–2021.
