Description
The Slovak Anti-discrimination Act, adopted in 2004, and its later amendments provided a qualified legal basis for promoting a) rights of minorities and b) combating discrimination issues. However, the implementation of anti - discrimination legislation in a legal practice faces serious obstacles and its proper application in courts remains inconsistent and often flawed. The project aims to improve implementation of antidiscrimination legislation in Slovak courts and thus enhance the quality of legal protection from discrimination for vulnerable groups. Besides improving access to justice in individual cases, the project aims to develop an application of ‘actio popularis’ claims (in translation: public claims), which have a great potential in eliminating discrimination of larger groups of persons and are barely ever used in the actual court practice. The project will enable to identify suitable strategic cases of discrimination, bring them in front of the courts and to litigate as individual and “actio popularis” claims. In particular, it focuses on the cases of discrimination against Roma minority in Slovakia. The project also enables to provide a qualified legal aid in specific cases of discrimination and to release an unique publication on usage of ‘actio popularis’ in order to counter discrimination in the Slovak society. The publication can be a valuable source of information for other NGOs, lawyers as well as judges, who may encounter “actio popularis” claims in their legal practice in the future. The project provides a space for cooperation with numerous Romani activists within the monitoring of discrimination against Roma in the field.
Summary of project results
Antidiscrimination Law in Slovakia was poorly implemented in practice and was not an effective legal tool of protection for discriminated persons. Its application by courts fell short of a legal quality and was considerably inconsistent. It was very rarely used by discriminated persons to protect themselves from discrimination and they did not believe that they could achieve justice in courts. The Project was a part of our long-term antidiscrimination program that is going to continue in the future. Within the project, we filed a number of individual and "actio popularis" lawsuits on the protection from discrimination that are currently still pending. We will continue to litigate the initiated lawsuits and thus further pursue the specified project goal, which was support of democratic values, including human rights. We will continue using project outputs like analysis, monitoring, publication and lawsuits and its results for further pursuing the original project goal. At the same time an impact of achieved outputs will be evaluated in the middle and long-term. The initiated lawsuits will generate additional media outputs as a result of the expected court decisions in the coming months and years. The goal of the project was support of democratic values, including human rights and it was pursued by achieving concrete project outputs. By the realization of the project all the planned outputs have been achieved. Despite of that, within the realization of the project the project team has been confronted with the expected project risks and had to particularly address a low trust of discriminated persons in judicial power in Slovakia. From qualitative point of view a tangible impact on the target groups and general society as such will be possible to evaluate in the middle and long-term and specifically after achieving final decisions of initiated lawsuits on the protection from discrimination.
Summary of bilateral results