Roma Program for Health and Human Rights

Marginalized and racialized groups, especially women and people with intersectional identities, are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Although research, media coverage, and civil society reports are limited, they suggest that Roma individuals, families, and children, particularly those in segregated neighborhoods and villages, are among these groups. However, Roma voices and perspectives, especially feminist and intersectional viewpoints, are often missing from climate justice research and policy dialogues.

Fostering Strength: Romani Feminist Leadership for Climate Action (hereinafter referred to as Romani Feminist Climate Action) seeks to fill part of this research gap and leadership scarcity. It leverages existing global evidence to examine the specific and common characteristics, impacts, and scope of climate hazards on Roma women, children, and families living in segregated areas across five European countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and Spain.

This projectforms part of the Roma Program’s 2023 Health and Well-being Initiative, which focuses on the structural and eco-social determinants of Roma health. In particular, this initiative aims to document the nexus between anti-Roma racism and health outcomes in Europe, the Americas, and beyond.

The Romani Feminist Climate Action project, along with the overall Roma Program, is based on the principle that Roma people themselves should have the lead in identifying priorities and developing solutions. To make this happen, we are forming a Working Group for Romani Feminist Climate Action – a team of ten feminists who will undergo specialized training, study visits, and mentorship in climate justice theory, research, advocacy, and leadership, all grounded in feminist, Indigenous, and anti-racist approaches.

The training is only the beginning. These leaders will engage directly with members of Romani neighborhoods and villages, working alongside community members to study how climate hazards are shaping their daily lives. We will collect data through both surveys and personal stories to provide a nuanced understanding of the realities faced by Roma women, children, and families.

Research alone, however, is not sufficient. Members of the Working Group will share the findings, not only in academic journals but also in practical, accessible ways that support community advocacy and policy dialogues. They will form collaborations with Indigenous leaders who drive climate action at the local and global levels. Additionally, members will participate in major climate justice events across Europe and worldwide, from the UN Climate Change Conference to regional environmental summits.

We expect that the Romani Feminist Climate Action will identify and raise awareness about the specific and shared challenges that Roma women, children, and families face due to climate hazards in Europe. But ultimately, we also hope that it will strengthen the skills, networks, and power of a generation of Romani feminist leaders to contribute to just and inclusive environmental, social, and political responses to the climate crisis.

The research project MEMOROBIA will generate knowledge on the historical roots and genealogy of anti-Roma racism, and the role the majority society has played in oppressing Roma.

To understand some of the consequences of Roma enslavement, this project will examine wealth gap, patterns of hiding Roma identity, Roma self-esteem, and anti-Roma attitudes and prejudice entrenched in the 500 years of enslavement. By analysing carefully collected empirical materials and using theories from slavery related contexts, the project will shed light on the relationship between the historical Roma enslavement, on one hand, and present-day anti-Roma racism, racialised poverty, social exclusion and Roma migrations, on the other.

By crossing the borders of traditional disciplines, the MEMOROBIA project will apply theories and methods from a range of disciplines, such as education, history, economics, social anthropology, political science and psychology. The goal is a more holistic understanding of slavery and its memorialisation than would be possible through the analysis of data within the framework of a single discipline. Read more.

Roma Program Director Dr. Margareta Matache co-authored an introduction to the work of the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health which was published in The Lancet on May 18th, 2023. Read here.

FXB Roma Program Director Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache was interviewed in April 2023 by Harvard Public Health following the 11th annual Roma conference at Harvard University and discussed racism’s negative health impacts on the Romani people. Read here.

Read FXB Roma Program Director Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache’s op-ed on Al Jazeera following the passing of the first-ever U.S. Senate resolution celebrating the heritage of Romani-Americans in December 2022. S. Res 124 is a critical milestone in recognizing and honoring the historical symbols, contributions, and experiences of the Romani people in the United States and beyond. The FXB Center joins Romani Americans and many others in welcoming this resolution. Read here.

Learn more about both past and ongoing work by reading Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache’s conversation with research fellows from the Boston University Center on Forced Displacement, published in November 2022. Read here.

In 2022, FXB Roma Program Director and Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache, was appointed a commissioner on the newly-launched O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health. Through leveraging partnerships, engaging communities, and conducting empirical research to understand racism and structural discrimination in global health, the Commission seeks to advance equity and improve health outcomes around the world.

Within its three-year lifespan, the Commission set out four charges: (i) diagnose the problem of racism in health; (ii) identify best practices and actionable anti-racist strategies; (iii) compile a report of its findings; and (iv) disseminate its findings to the public.

To that end, the study examined previously uncounted experiences of everyday discrimination – daily experiences of ethno-racial insults, jokes, stereotype-based questioning, passive or active distancing, and incidents where Romani people are misunderstood, underestimated, overlooked, or ignored.

Key findings reveal widespread incidents of everyday discrimination. Almost all of the Romani Canadians who were interviewed experienced one or more incidents of everyday discrimination, particularly: identity misconceptions, ethno–racial insults or jokes, distancing, stereotype-based questioning.

The research team also examined major discrimination, including the denial of resources, differential treatment, and ethno-racial profiling in institutional and social settings; more than two-thirds of Romani respondents reported personal experiences of major discrimination. Denial of housing was the most widely reported experience of major discrimination: approximately half of respondents who were denied rental (8 out of 15) attributed the denial to their Hungarian Roma origins.

In collaboration with Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, and Caroline M. Elkins, Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache worked on providing an interdisciplinary perspective on this topic, originally inspired by the excellent presentations and discussion at “Responses to State Sponsored Collective Violence,” the fourth annual Roma conference at Harvard, organized by the FXB Center.

In this sweeping international perspective on reparations, Time for Reparations makes the case that past state injustice—be it slavery or colonization, forced sterilization or widespread atrocities—has enduring consequences that generate ongoing harm, which needs to be addressed as a matter of justice and equity. The University of Pennsylvania Press published the volume in 2021.