Ten Years After: A History of Roma School Desegregation in Central and Eastern Europe

List of Contributors

List of Contributors Gwendolyn Albert is an independent human rights activist and researcher . She is a co-author of Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe (2012), issued by the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, and has contributed with human rights reporting to the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the UN Human Rights Committee, and the Universal Periodic Review. She currently consults to the Open Society Foundations Public Health Program. Anita Danka is a Human Rights Adviser at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Before her current post, she worked at the Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues at ODIHR and as a Staff Attorney at the European Roma Rights Centre. She is a certified lawyer and holds an M.A. degree in Human Rights from the Central European University and an M.A. in English language from the University of Debrecen. In the area of Roma rights, she has published on combating hate crimes and intolerance against Roma, segregation in education, coercive sterilization, police abuse, discrimination in access to employment and political participation and contributed to several successful cases of Roma applicants before the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Miroslava Hapalová is the Director of People in Need—Slovakia, an NGO focusing on the integration of socially excluded Roma localities. She obtained a degree in Psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava, where she is also a Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology. As a trainer and researcher, she has cooperated with several nongovernmental organizations as well as academic and research institutions. 368 List of Contributors Krassimir Kanev is Chairperson of the Board of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the most important Bulgarian human rights NGO. He teaches human rights at Sofia University and has taught at several other universities in Bulgaria and abroad. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Kanev has been extensively involved in public advocacy on behalf of Roma school desegregation . He has evaluated several times the ongoing school desegregation projects operated by non-governmental organizations in Bulgaria. Dr. Kanev himself and his organization have litigated at the domestic and international level over different types of discrimination and other human rights violations of Roma. Martina Kubánová has been a senior researcher at the Slovak Governance Institute in Bratislava since 2001. She focuses mostly on education policy issues, ranging from school financing, education cost-effectiveness, minority education, to private tutoring, parental payments in education, as well as public sector accountability and cost-efficiency. She received her university degree at the University of Economics in Bratislava and completed her non-degree post-gradual studies in Applied Economics at the Academia Istropolitana Nova. Florin Moisă is the Executive President of the Resource Center for Roma Communities Foundation (RCRC) in Cluj Napoca, Romania. He holds a degree in Social Work, a Master of Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca, Romania. Between 1995 and 1999, he was a Teacher Assistant with the Social Work Department, Babeş-Bolyai University, and in 1998–1999 was a Program Coordinator for Open Society Foundation, Romania. He continued during the last years to teach part time at the Social Work Department and also at the Journalism Department, Babeş-Bolyai University. Since 2000 he has been involved in developing programs for the improvement of the Roma situation and gained extensive expertise in the field of European Union programs. He is also involved in consultancy activity in the field of organizational development, project management, community development, entrepreneurship, monitoring and evaluation. Iulius Rostas holds an M.A. in Human Rights from the Central European University and is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology with the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj. He is a former director of the Roma programs of the Open Society Institute and worked previously as International Advocacy Coordinator with the European Roma Rights Centre and as an expert for List of Contributors 369 the Government of Romania—Department for Protection of National Minorities . Iulius Rostas advocated for Roma school desegregation in Central and Eastern Europe and provided technical assistance and capacity building to NGOs and governments in the region. He has published articles and...