Associazione 21 luglio expresses its deep concern at the project of building an “eco-village” to house the approximately 250 Roma currently living in the settlement of Masseria del Pozzo in Giugliano, province of Naples.
This project, born out of an agreement between the Municipality of Giugliano, the Region of Campania and the Minister of the Interior, would inevitably lead to a reiteration of the spatial segregation on ethnic grounds and the violation of human rights of people who have already been the object of discriminatory policies. These policies confine them to a noxious area neighbouring a landfill, with high levels of pollution due to the verified presence of toxic waste, and to sub-standard living conditions.
Moving the Roma inhabitants of Masseria del Pozzo to the new so-called “eco-village” underlines once again how, when addressing the Roma housing problem, the local and national authorities take only an emergency approach, neglecting any form of medium or long term planning. In fact, the same approach was taken in 2013, when the authorities of Giugliano moved the Roma people, forcibly evicted from informal settlements nearby, to the formal settlement of Masseria del Pozzo. This operation excluded those affected from the decision-making process and cost circa 400,000 euros.
While on the one hand the Associazione 21 luglio considers the gradual closure of the ghetto of Masseria del Pozzo a positive development from the perspective of the National Strategy for the Inclusion of Roma people, approved by the Italian government in 2012, it also fears that transferring the Roma onto a new “eco-village” would only bring about the birth of another “mega-camp” (the camp has the potential to house many more Roma people, as the related documentation shows). This could bring about a segregation on an ethnic basis which de facto excludes men, women and children from any possibility of social inclusion, as shown already by many other experiences in Italy.
Amongst other things, the project would have a high economic cost: around 1,3 million euros that, divided per 44 family units affected, amounts to 30,000 euros per family. This is a sum which could allow the authorities to draw on a broad range of other housing solutions which, unlike the one proposed, would allow for medium or long-term planning. These alternative solutions would not maintain the housing issues for Roma people on a parallel track in regards to the general population.
One of the unclear points in the project is linked to the temporary character with which the authorities have defined the intervention for the placement of Roma people in the new “eco-village”. Thirty years of “camp politics” in Italy – as the Associazione 21 luglio underlines – have shown how this type of operation, born to be temporary, has ended up transforming into de facto permanent housing solutions, with a concurrent deterioration of the quality of housing itself.
This is the case, just to cite one example, of the “La Barbuta Camp”, born as a temporary solution in 2012 and ruled discriminatory based on ethnic grounds by the Civil Court of Rome on May 30th, 2015, following a legal action taken by Associazione 21 luglio and ASGI (Association for Legal Studies on Migration).
Associazione 21 luglio hopes thus that the Municipality of Giugliano, the Region of Campania and the Minister of the Interior, aware of the project of the “eco-village” being unsustainable economically and from a human rights point of view, can promptly change the decision made and convert the operations towards a solution that, starting from the inescapable gradual closure of the settlement of Masseria del Pozzo, will promote a real and efficient inclusion of the Roma community of Giugliano.
Strong doubts on the project have also been expressed by the President for the Commission for Human Rights of the Italian Senate, Luigi Manconi, according to whom “in the way it has been conceived, the eco-village risks ending up not representing a solution, but rather becoming once again a temporary operation destined to fail.”
Traduzione dall’italiano di Mira Peliti
