Information from the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch helped provide the basis for a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights involving discrimination against Roma children in the Czech Republic. The Court determined that the government discriminated against 18 children, part of an ethnic minority in the country, by sending them to schools for students with learning disabilities. The children were sent to the special schools after they were required to take psychological tests designed to assess their intellectual capacity. The legal case centered on the concept of “indirect discrimination,” in which a policy disproportionately affects a particular group. The Court, for the first time, recognized that indirect discrimination is prohibited by European human rights conventions in the same way as direct discrimination. Interights and Human Rights Watch, both MacArthur grantees, intervened in the case, providing the Court with information and analysis on the concept of indirect discrimination.
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