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Jewish Community urges Govt to protect right to home for Gypsy, Roma and Travellers

6 Mar, 2019 | Equal Rights for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, News

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A cross-denominational group of Rabbis and community leaders have signed René Cassin’s letter to the Home Office to express the Jewish Community’s concern over discrimination and racism targeted towards Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the UK.

The letter was sent in response to a Home Office statement regarding a crackdown on ‘illegal traveller sites’ as a way of ‘protecting our local communities’. René Cassin voices concern at “this use of discriminatory language, which legitimises the criminalisation of an entire community. It is this kind of discrimination that permeates the deepest levels of society, such that it is often not even recognised for what it is”.

You can read the letter in full here.

Statement from Mia Hasenson-Gross, René Cassin Director:

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities together constitute Europe’s largest ethnic minority and they share a history of persecution with Jewish people. Recent studies have shown that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities experience more racism and discrimination than any other group in the UK and face multiple disadvantages, such as with regards to education, health, the workplace and the justice system.

Representatives across the Jewish community have signed our letter to the Home Office to express concern over the faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the UK.

The Jewish community stands in solidarity with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in eliminating prejudice and ensuring no one is denied the right to a home.

Both Jewish News and Traveller Times have written about this action of solidarity displayed by the Jewish community.

Today, 10th December, is International Human Rights Day – the 76th anniversary of the signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. 

 

 

The Declaration was a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. So, for Jews, today has a particuar significance. 

Although rooted in response to atrocity, the Declaration was forward-looking and optimistic. It spoke for the majority of people who knew a better world was possible. The fact that it’s co-author , the French-Jewish lawyer Monsieur Rene Cassin, could draft such a hopeful document so soon after 26 members of his family were murdered by the Nazis is a testament to his humanity and the power of human rights in general. 

Today, as the organisation that works in Cassin’s name, we are determined to ensure his Declaration’s vision of human rights for all is fully realised. Central to that work is a focus on so called ‘socio-economic rights’ – rights to everyday essentials like food, housing and health. This vision was best articulated in Article 25 of the Declaration: 

‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’.

Bolstering these rights would ensure everybody has access to the foundations on which to build a dignified, prosperous and meaningful life. They have been neglected for too long.

 

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