Council of Europe’s Anti-Racism Commission publishes new report on Estonia

In light of this report the ECRI’s Chair, Nils Muiznieks acknowledged that there had been improvements, but also expressed concern about the large number of stateless persons, the limited contact between Russian speakers and Estonians, high unemployment among minority groups and discrimination against Roma.

There were also several positive findings mentioned for example, the 2008 Equal Treatment Act provides a sound framework for combating racism and related forms of discrimination in number of areas, such as employment, education, housing and social protection. The Gender Equality and Equal Treatment Commissioner has been charged with monitoring compliance with this Act.

The Estonian Integration Strategy 2008-2013 contains a number of valuable goals to address issues of concern to Russian-speaking minorities and stateless persons. These include providing Estonian language lessons, combating inequalities between Russians and Estonians in the employment sector, reducing the number of stateless persons as well as preserving the culture and identity of ethnic minorities.

At the same time, the number of stateless persons, while gradually decreasing, is still as high as 8% of the population. Contacts between the Russian-speaking minorities and Estonians are still too limited and the multicultural component of education should be developed further in order to bridge the gap between these communities. The unemployment rate among minority groups remains twice as high as for Estonians. 

In consideration of these issues the ECRI made several recommendations of which the most urgent were as follows: 

• Ensure the quality of education offered to Russian-speaking children, for example by providing more training for Russian-speaking school teachers;
• Reduce the number of persons without citizenship;
• Tackle the undue placement of Roma children in special schools and ensure their reintegration in mainstream schools.