World children's Day 2017: in Italy 15.000 Roma minors are still living in slums
World Children’s Day. Associazione 21 luglio and REYN Italy: «15 thousand Roma minors living in Italian slums are deprived of rights. To reach real inclusion, it is necessary to combat ethnicisation in the policies».
In occasion of the World Children’s Day, Associazione 21 luglio and REYN Italy – active in the promotion of the rights and wellbeing of children – denounce the dramatic condition of the 15 thousand Roma minors living in formal and informal slums in the country. In Rome, it is estimated that 4.100 minors live in housing emergency and in poverty: 1.350 between 0 and 6 years of age, 2.750 between 7 and 18 years. The life of all these minors is signed by social exclusion, few access to health services and stigma. For these children life expectancy is 10 years below the average, in 1 case out of 5 they will not enter schooling paths and they will have almost 0 possibilities to go to university.
Housing conditions are the first obstacle encountered by Roma minors that affects their right to education. The majority of the slums are located far away from basic services, in extreme peripheries and in filthy and polluted areas. Lack of income, discrimination, social exclusion, cultural deprivation and inadequacy of the housing space are all factors that impact enormously on the physical and psychological wellbeing of the minors and cause the so-called “ghetto pathologies”: malnutrition, scabies, tuberculosis, anxiety and depression.
Forced evictions of informal settlements constitute traumatic events for children that live in slums, rendering families’ living conditions even more uncertain. They have also serious consequences on the right to education of children that suffer them. In Naples, in Gianturco neighbourhood, a forced eviction that involved 1.300 Roma in housing emergency (half of them were minors), caused a real diaspora just at the eve of the international Roma day on 8 April 2017.
In the Capital, since November 2016 there was an increase of 133% in the number of forced evictions.
«Recurrent ethnic policies have fuelled a circle of poverty and social exclusion, trapping disadvantaged families and becoming obstacles to the access to fundamental rights, such as housing and education – declared Carlo Stasolla, President of Associazione 21 luglio. REYN Italy is at work to promote a change in Italy aimed at fostering inclusive policies starting from early childhood characterised by quality and high professionalism».