The European Court of Human Rights decided: the placement of Roma children in schools for mentally disabled is discriminatory

Discriminatory practices in Hungarian tests to diagnose mental disability

The
claim
that the European Court of Human Rights was dealing with, was about the systemic misdiagnosis of Roma children as
mentally disabled which was going on since at least the 1970s. The Hungarian
government was accused to use this as a tool to segregate Roma children form non-Roma
children.

The definition of special educational needs includes not only mental
disability but also educational challenges, dyslexia and behavioral problems.
This was leading to a lot of miss qualifications. The tests that the Hungarian
government implemented is producing inequalities as they do not take into
account the different background of ethnic minorities. This leaves Roma in a
disadvantaged position. The biggest difference between Roma and non-Roma
children occurred in a performance test, “The Mosaic Test”. As the European
Court of Human Rights pointed out that “one explanation for this is that Roma
children have less experience with toys and games where units from bits or
pictures from pieces (e.g. toy cubes with different pictures on each side, or
puzzles, etc.) had to be assembled”.

The case of Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss

The claimants were Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss, two Hungarian Roma who were
diagnosed to have a “mild mental disability”. They were claiming

“that their education in a remedial school had amounted to direct and/or
indirect discrimination in the enjoyment of their right to education, on the
basis of their Roma origin, in that their schooling assessments had been paper-based
and culturally biased, their parents could not exercise their participatory
rights, they had been placed in schools designed for the mentally disabled whose
curriculum had been limited, and they had been stigmatized in consequence”

They were both placed in the Göllesz Viktor Remedial Primary and Vocational
School, in which 40 to 50% are Roma students. Both of them were examined several
times and always diagnosed to have a “mild mental disability”. When Mr. Horváth
had his first examination his parents were even asked to sign the expert opinion before the examination, as they told them that he will be placed in a
remedial school anyways. Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss were both very good students
and hard working but this was never taken into account for the examination. Mr.
Kiss was even an A student until the 7th grade, but his teacher told him “that
he could not continue his studies to become a car mechanic as he intended to,
because as a remedial school pupil, he could only choose between training
courses offered by a special vocational school”.

Both applicants participated in a summer camp in August 2005. In the
framework of this camp there was a testing of 61 children with ‘special
educational needs’. This was the first time that Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss were
not classified to be mentally disabled. In Fact it was quite the opposite, their
findings were that Mr. Horváth had a immature nervous system which could
potentially cause behavioral and study problems but this would not mean that he
is mentally disabled or unfit for an integrated mainstream class. Through the
examination of Mr. Kiss they found out that he suffered from immaturity of the
nervous system and dyslexia but again as in Mr. Horváth case, they suggested an
immediate intervention by the authorities in order to place him into a
mainstream school and to provide him with appropriate education.

On the 29 January 2013 the European Court of Human Rights decided in favor of
Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss and agreed with them that the procedure of diagnosing
children as mentally disabled is discriminating Roma children.

Reactions to the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights

The
European Roma Rights Center was representing Mr. Horváth and Mr. Kiss
through their lawyer Mrs. L Farkas in the process. The ERRC also wrote a press
release in which they were addressing Hungary’s violation of the European
Convention on Human Rights in a case on the segregated education of Romani
children in a special school.

On the 30th of January 2013 also
Amnesty International was asking for an end
of the segregation and discrimination against Romani children in schools.
Amnesty stressed that those violations of human rights do not just take place in
Hungary but also in other European Countries for example in Czech Republic,
Greece, Croatia and Slovakia. That is why Amnesty addressed this call for change
not at the Hungarian government but at the European governments.