Slovakia - Universal Periodic Review

UPR 32, January 28, 2019
Recommendations by Canada

Recommendations

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Thank you, Mr. President.

Canada deeply appreciates Slovakia’s commitment to the multilateral human rights system, and the significant progress it has made in building a free and democratic state in its first 25 years.

Canada recommends that Slovakia:

1. Ensure that every Roma child attends quality, inclusive and desegregated schools.
2. Establish an independent body to investigate the full extent of sterilization without informed consent.
3. Establish an independent and impartial police oversight authority to investigate and prosecute alleged abuses.
4. Establish an independent anti-corruption agency with powers to investigate and prosecute all allegations of corruption before a new, independent anti-corruption tribunal.

Thank you.

Background

Canada’s previous recommendations, which were accepted, were to: implement the recommendations made in the August 2013 Extraordinary Report by the Public Defender of Rights; allocate appropriate resources to her office to facilitate equal access to justice for all citizens, and further strengthen its monitoring and reporting capacity; and establish a task force of relevant Ministries and civil society organisations to develop a plan to de-segregate Roma education and to ensure the necessary resources are available to begin implementation.

Slovakia received 91 recommendations in the first cycle, of which 79 were accepted, and 147 recommendations in the second cycle, of which 134 were accepted and 5 partially rejected (an acceptance rate of ~92% for both cycles).

However, discrimination against Roma remains widespread, and elected politicians continue to engage in anti-Roma rhetoric.  There are several items of particular concern. There are serious concerns about police brutality against Roma individuals. There is still no independent body to investigate alleged police abuses, and Roma who have complained of mistreatment by the police but had their claims rejected, have been prosecuted for perjury, including in relation to the 2013 police raid in Moldava nad Bodvou. These charges are widely perceived as being retribution and intimidation.

There also remains systematic discrimination against Roma children in the Slovakian education system.  Roma children disproportionately lack access to pre-school and are often placed in separate “special education” programs, which are inferior to the regular education system and fail to adequately prepare them for post-secondary education, thus limiting their career opportunities.  Roma children are often spatially segregated even when in the regular school system.

In addition, despite the previous recommendations of the UN Human Rights Council and other international human rights bodies, as well as judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, the Slovak Government has not taken any steps to effectively investigate the practice of coercive sterilizations of Roma women, and has not provided victims with adequate remedies.

There continue to be concerns about corruption and the independence of the judiciary.  Slovakia ranks 54th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption Perception Index. Concerns have been raised by observers about the number and scope of allegations of official corruption, including fraud in relation to use of EU funds. This includes the apparent near-impunity of officials alleged to be involved in corruption and lengthy delays in prosecuting cases.

Journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were murdered in February 2018, apparently because of his investigations into allegations of official corruption. While some arrests have been made, prosecutions have not commenced, and it is not clear yet who ordered the murders.

Concerns have been expressed by observers about apparent efforts by the management of public broadcaster RTVS to interfere with the editorial independence of its news service, in particular not renewing contracts of journalists who have produced stories critical of the governing coalition. High damage awards for defamation risk chilling criticism on issues of legitimate public concern.

Questions have been raised by observers about the impartiality and effectiveness of the judiciary and prosecutorial services, and lack of accountability for respect for professional codes of conduct and ethics. Public confidence in state institutions, in particular the judicial system, is low.

A new law adopted by the government requires registration of NGOs and should be monitored to ensure that it is not used in future to undermine Slovakia’s independent civil society.

In September 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected an application submitted in 2015 by Slovakia and Hungary against a mandatory program for the relocation of refugees among EU member states. By the end of 2017, Slovakia had accepted only 16 asylum-seekers of the 902 that it was assigned. A Vietnamese asylum-seeker was abducted by Vietnamese agents in Berlin in 2017, and then transported back to Vietnam through Slovakia, allegedly using a Slovak government aircraft. The police investigation into this incident was closed without any prosecution. Elected politicians continued to engage in anti-refugee and anti-migrant rhetoric.