Michael O’Flaherty

Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe

Video statement on the occasion of 2 August 2024, Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma

It is my great honor to participate in these events commemorating the Holocaust, the genocide of European Roma and Sinti.

I first became aware in detail of the genocide when I visited the museum in Heidelberg some 10 years ago.

There, through the excellent presentations, I, too late in my life, but finally, became aware of this horror, this stain on European history.

500,000 people murdered in an attempt to wipe out an entire people.

Never again.

It is so important to deliver on Never Again, that we remember.

We must never allow the stories to die.

And the challenge of remembering is all the greater today as those who survived these horrors themselves pass away.

We need new ways to remember, new ways to commemorate, new ways to make sure that our children know what happened and with that sense of Never Again.

Of course, it’s not just about remembering.

It is also about recognizing the reality of today, the reality of shocking and unacceptable and, frankly, rising levels of anti-gypsyism, of patterns of hatred, discrimination, harassment perpetrated against the members of Roma, Sinti, and Travellers communities.

In other words, we are living in a context in which terrible things can happen again.

Now, as a dimension of our pushback, it’s vital to work in support of respect for the human rights of every member of the Roma, Sinti, and Travellers, wherever they are.

I pledge, as recently appointed Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, to do all that I can, as one of my top priorities, to tackle anti-Gypsyism and to stand up for the human rights of the Roma, Sinti, and Travellers communities.

One last thing, my pledge is to work with Roma, Sinti, and Travellers communities, not for them, but to work in partnership, supporting you, working with you so that we together can deliver that better world in which we are all treated equally with respect in our great diversity.

Dziękuję.

Biografia

Michael O’ Flaherty is the current Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe. He has identified the promotion and protection of the human rights of Roma and Travellers as one of the priorities of his six-year mandate, which he took up on 1 April 2024.

An Irish human rights lawyer, O’ Flaherty has served as Director of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (2015-2023), as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (2004-2012), as Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2011-2013), and in various posts at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, notably in setting up operations in conflict-affected countries such as Sierra Leone and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He has served as professor of human rights at the law schools of the University of Nottingham and the University of Galway.