Identity of Roma women and processes of international and transitional justice

Ana María Jara Gómez

doi:10.17561/tahrj.v17.6385

Abstract

Among the women involved in international legal environments, there are women who are administrators of justice, and women who remain as recipients, consumers or petitioners of justice. The question of identity, be it national, cultural, ethnic, religious or otherwise may become crucial when positioning human beings in one side of justice or another. This article seeks to analyse the formation of identities and the characteristics of Roma women’s identity and specifically their roles in international justice together with some actual European political stances towards the Roma peoples. Part of the study will take into account the sequence of processes that take place from the appointment of international judges to the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, and that lead to the granting of a certain place for women in the transitional/international justice scene. Nevertheless, there are also groups of women who hardly participate in the international legal scene and, although their role has historically been, and still is, reduced to being victims, their possibilities of action in the field justice are extraordinarily limited. This is the case of Roma women in Europe.

Highlights

Among the women involved in international legal environments, there are women who are administrators of justice, and women who remain, exclusively, as recipients, consumers or petitioners of justice
Women involved in the provision of international justice
It is useful to analyse the characteristics of this distribution of roles and to carry out an analysis that takes into account the role of identity in the processes that take place from the appointment of international judges to the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, and that lead to the granting of a certain place for women in the international justice scene

Summary

Introduction

Among the women involved in international legal environments, there are women who are administrators of justice, and women who remain, exclusively, as recipients, consumers or petitioners of justice. There is no appreciation of the distinction between Roma culture and marginalization culture (Fakali, 2013) These attitudes and practices that reproduce the pariah status of the Roma, the systematic abuse of their rights, their history of widespread persecution and racial discrimination and the growing European anti-Gypsism, are precisely the ones contributing to the survival of the Roma as an ethnic, cultural and social identity (Petrova, 2003). Identity of Roma women and their exclusion in processes of international and transitional justice existence of a Roma community with urgent social needs is perceived, the more coexistence wil be thought in terms of ethnic or racial differences, underpinning the construction of inequality through the construction of an exclusive identity.

An approach to transitional justice

Crimes against women

Women involved in the provision of international justice

Roma Women’s Identity

Findings

Final remarks