Freedom This is what it is about ... Return to the Development list This section is being introduced to Romani World in line with the upsurge in political philosophy and action which is returning to what works. Rather than labour and struggle with so-called Human Rights it makes more sense to talk in terms of individual freedom; it always did. Today Human Rights are 'issued" and controlled by politicians in the legislatures who have a stronger allegiance to their political parties than to their constituents. Even worse, in most European countries, judges are political party appointees and fail even the simplest tests of impartiality. Under such circumstances, Human Rights is a second-class legality where there might be, from time to time small successes. However, in general, anyone hoping for fair treatment under the so-called "rule of law" is dreaming unless their case is very neutral with respect to political party interests. We are preparing this section along the lines of identifying the commonalities between Roma family values and those of society in general and re-casting these in terms of the emerging stands on individual freedoms advanced by contemporary work and promoted by some online media. For example, within the English political environment, see http://www.realnews-online.com. The European Committee on Romani Emancipation (ECRE) has re-aligned its approach within this same context. We believe that this will open up a more productive approach to gaining equality of opportunities for the Roma because the issues at stake are a common cause of all within European society. ECRE refer to this modified approach in their new website. Measuring freedom through constitutional economics One of the most important issues to arise from ECRE field work has been the measurement of the economic impacts of abused constitutional provisions in the field of racial discrimination. This was first explicitly set out in a letter from the then Director of the Agricultural Development Foundation, Hector McNeill, to Gunter Verheugen, Commissioner for Enlargement at the European Commission in 1999, complaining about the impact of educational denial of the Roma. This economic aspect also featured in the ECRE report in 2003. However, although not emphasised by human rights workers it is in political terms one of the most sensitive issues and it therefore a topic which was always avoided by the European Commission (Department of Enlargement). This work continues to be developed at SEEL through their Constitutional Econonomics Unit concerned with both the theory and the practice of constitutional economics. Their work on the CESS model is now well known as one of the few to measure, in the context of the Roma, the economic impact of the proactive denial of educational opportunities on GNP. This approach is emerging as a significant new approach to human rights and it can be considered to be one which measures the economic impacts of restrictions in individual freedom. Emancipation Indeed, we understand that the choice of the word emancipation in ECRE's name was to indicate their role in working towards the removal of restrictions and impositions on the Roma. The British NGO E-mancipation has adoped this name and taken up a parallel cause on the part of the whole of society based upon ECRE experience. E-mancipation will also be advancing its cause through arguments concerning basic freedom and constitutional economics. This approach is important because the damage caused to society as a whole by politicians and corrupt judicial decisions can be measured in objective economic terms and can be shown to result in considerable damage to society as a whole. This isn't just a theory An extreme example is the case of Hungary where the losses resulting from education denial and lack of professional training of Roma attained some Euro12 billion in 2006 resulting in the government facing serious fiscal problems. This "structural" economics problem facing Hungary causes this country to be unlikely to meet the Euro membership criteria. Forthcoming publications SEEL will soon publish some significant results which demonstrate the importance of the constitutional economics approach. It can be seen to be highly significant to the question of human rights because it provides more generally felt measures of the negative consequences of human rights abuse. The forthcoming publications are mentioned on the scrolling home page at Agence Presse Européenne: here Futher contributions to this section of Romani World will be added under an index on this page as they are released.