International donors, governments, and private foundations gathered in Brussels on November 11-12, 2009 and mobilized €25.5 million to support the Roma Education Fund (REF), which aims to help improve the lives of millions of European Roma children who lack access to good quality education and other social services, and continue to live at the outskirts of larger societies. The conference was co-hosted by the Open Society Institute and the World Bank and held under the umbrella of the Swedish Presidency of the EU.

The Roma, estimated to number between 10 and 12 million people (1% of the European Union’s population), remain one of the most vulnerable groups in Europe and are excluded from opportunities available to most non-Roma citizens. The statistics on educational outcomes for young Roma are particularly staggering. Recent World Bank studies show that many Roma children in Romania, Bulgaria, and other EU member states still attend schools that are segregated either explicitly or implicitly. The low primary school completion rate among young Roma is similar to that prevailing in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where only 6 out of 10 children are able to complete their primary education.

“No matter how often I see these figures, the economic and social indicators associated to the Roma Community continue to strike me as something that does not belong in the Europe of the 21st century,” said World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala during her opening speech at the conference. “There is a disproportionate share of Roma children enrolled in special schools for children with learning disabilities, which is a covert way to segregate them into separate schools.”

The most moving moments during the conference sessions were when young Roma and REF grantees themselves recounted their life stories, gave personal accounts of their struggle through discrimination and prejudice, and emphasized how education had changed their lives and given them an opportunity for a better future. Many of the REF grantees were the first to have received college degrees in their family history.

Education is one of the areas where the Roma lag behind the rest of the societies the most. In Bulgaria 51 percent of pupils in special education are Roma, and in Hungary it is 40 percent. As a result, children are effectively barred from progression to secondary education and are ill-prepared to find a job when they leave school. European countries are doing a lot to reverse these statistics, but much more remains to be done.

The Brussels conference gathered distinguished speakers, including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Institute, Costel Bercus, chair of the Roma Education Fund governing board, Livia Jaroka, Member of the European Parliament, James D. Wolfensohn, the Bank’s former President, ECA Vice President Philippe Le Houerou, and Ambassador Maria Leissner of the Swedish Foreign Affairs Ministry, to name but a few.

Poverty and social exclusion of Roma is an important economic development challenge, and addressing it is at the core of the Bank’s mission. The Bank has been supporting the REF through numerous analytical and project programs. Some of the best examples of the Bank’s work that promote social inclusion, including Roma inclusion, are the Conditional Cash Transfers program in FYR Macedonia, the Bulgaria Social Inclusion project , and the Romania Social Development Fund.

“The costs of Roma exclusion are high for country economies,” said ECA Vice President Philippe Le Houerou. The joblessness of Roma is an economic challenge which carries substantial unnecessary costs. For example, in the Czech Republic, over half of Czech Roma of working age between 15 and 64 are out of the labor force; according to the 2008 World Bank study Improving Employment Chances of the Roma. And so, the economic argument for Roma inclusion becomes even stronger. The World Bank plans to conduct studies for other European countries to better document the cost of Roma exclusion.

“We, at the Bank, see the importance of Roma inclusion not only in the context of a fundamental human right but also because we view education as a cornerstone of inclusive Roma policies,” said Le Houerou.

About the Roma Education Fund
The Roma Education Fund , co-founded by the World Bank and the OSI in 2005, has become the leading international organization tackling the important issue of Roma education. The objective of REF is to help Central and Eastern European countries to close the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma children through providing financing for innovative interventions that promote access to quality education and to become a knowledge base for good practice in Roma education.

The REF makes a difference on the ground every day. In the last five years the Roma Education Fund has provided about EUR17 million for more than 180 project grants in 12 Central and South-East European countries. In 2008 alone, it reached more than 30 thousand pupils and students from the Roma community, and provided more than EUR1.2 million to help 809 Roma students attend university.

Through advocacy and expert advice, the REF has influenced governments in setting policies promoting social inclusion of Roma. For example, it advised on the preparation of a ministerial order for desegregation of schools in Romania and it provided expert evidence in the European Court of Human Rights case which found discrimination against Roma children in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where some Roma were inappropriately enrolled in special education. The REF has also built a strong institutional capacity on Roma education issues, becoming a center of expertise in de-segregation of schools, expansion of pre-school education, and the delivery of scholarships also at secondary education level.

At the conference, Ambassador Maria Leissner of the Swedish Foreign Affairs Ministry emphasized the need of leaving no Roma child without a complete primary education. She stressed that the exclusion of the Roma population in Europe must come to an end as the right to education is a basic human right. “It is essential to stop the education gap between Roma and non-Roma,” she added.

“Roma want to contribute to society. They want to improve the lives of their children and give them a better life than they had. The most important factor that keeps so many Roma trapped in poverty is a lack of education; with increased political will and improved cooperation we can tackle this problem head-on,” said George Soros, chairman of the Open Society Institute and one of the founders of the REF.