Roma children
From health care to education, and from decent living conditions to effective child protection, Roma children face exclusion and are often overlooked and disadvantaged
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Roma children in Europe and Central Asia
Our goal: In line with our mandate to prioritize the most marginalized children and empower communities, UNICEF upholds the rights of Roma children by working to address their needs and break down the barriers that lead to their exclusion.
Data from the region
Roma children in the Europe and Central Asia region are twice as likely to live in poverty as their non-Roma peers.
In Kosovo1, Montenegro and Serbia, they are up to three times more likely to live in material deprivation (which includes a lack of essentials such as heating).
They are almost twice as likely to be unvaccinated with the third dose of the DTP vaccine (the benchmark for immunization rates).
In Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia, around 75 per cent of children in Roma settlements do not attend early childhood education.
There are around 10 to 13 million Roma people living in the Europe and Central Asia region, but their exact numbers are unclear, as many live in informal settlements or lack official documents and they are often ‘invisible’ in official statistics. They are also one of the most disadvantaged groups: millions lack decent living conditions and basic services.
Roma children are, for example, twice as likely to grow up in poverty as their non-Roma peers. UNICEF-supported surveys in Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia have also found that many Roma children live in severe material deprivation, which includes the inability of households to cope with unexpected expenses, keep their home warm, or avoid rent arrears: 80 per cent in Kosovo, 81 per cent in Montenegro and 83 per cent in Serbia, compared to national rates of 34 per cent, 20 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively. Many also live in dwellings where the roofs leak, the walls are damp and there is no indoor toilet: 85 per cent in Kosovo, 83 per cent in Serbia and 78 per cent in Montenegro.
Poverty increases the risks of institutionalization, and Roma children are more likely than many other children to be separated from their families and placed in institutional care – a particularly horrendous manifestation of discrimination.
Roma children are more likely to miss out on education, good nutrition and health care. Around three in every four children in Roma settlements do not attend pre-schools in Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia. They have less access to a diverse, nutritious diet, and are more likely to suffer from stunting. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, they are five times more likely to suffer from malnutrition and twice as likely to face stunted growth.
Roma children are nearly twice as likely to be unvaccinated as non-Roma children – a reflection of the extent to which barriers prevent them from accessing health services, including social stigma, marginalization, and economic challenges.
Rates of child marriage also tend to spike among marginalized communities. In parts of the Balkans, half of all Roma women aged 20-24 were married before the age of 18, compared to just 10 per cent among their non-Roma peers.
Key policies
1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Every article of the Convention is relevant for the survival, development and well-being of Roma children. Article 2, in particular, obliges every State to respect and ensure the rights set out in the Convention for every child, regardless of their ethnic or social origins.
2015 Sustainable Development Goals
- All 17 of the interlinked Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are relevant for Roma children, recognizing that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth.
What is UNICEF doing?
UNICEF prioritizes the needs and rights of the most marginalized and excluded children across the Europe and Central Asia region, including those living in Roma communities. In common with our work with and for other marginalized children in the region – including those affected by migration and those with disabilities – we aim to ensure that Roma children and their families are connected to the services to which they are entitled.
Our work on child poverty, for example, aims to extend the reach and scale of child benefits to all families in need. And we aim to reinforce the links between social protection and other key services, such as social care, early childhood development, education and health, to tackle the multidimensional poverty that goes beyond a lack of income.
UNICEF has worked to keep families together and prevent the institutionalization of children across the Europe and Central Asia region since the early 1990s. We promote strong, child-focused services that help families stay together where possible. Our work has led to the closure of large-scale residential institutions for children, and has helped to reunite children with their families, or place them in nurturing, family-based care. And we push for childcare reforms that shift much-needed resources from large-scale institutional care to family and community-based alternatives, based on a sharp focus on the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach children.
Our support for home-visiting programmes aims to connect families to health services. We support the Universal and Progressive Home Visiting (UPHV) model, an approach based on strong partnerships between trained health professionals and families. In a number of countries, Roma Health Mediators – trusted and trained professionals from Roma communities – provide a vital bridge between communities and basic services, such as immunization.
They also offer advice and guidance on issues such as child marriage. In countries including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye, our efforts to prevent child marriage have also included support for hotlines and referrals to services that can offer girls direct help.
UNICEF works to ensure every child has the best possible start to a lifetime of learning by supporting good quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). We encourage governments to invest more in ECEC, and to ensure that every child – not matter where or who they are – has access to the early learning that they need.
And we work with local partners to map the needs of Roma communities – essential for their inclusion in national statistics and planning, and for effective measures to reduce child poverty and expand the coverage of basic services, from health and education to child protection.
1. All references to Kosovo are made in the context of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).