Catholic Online Forum

Two ethnic Roma (Gypsy) men have won a discrimination case against Hungary at the European Court of Human Rights over their education at a remedial school.

Education in a school for the mentally disabled meant the pair were isolated from mainstream society - a bar to their integration, the judges found.

The Strasbourg court said their schooling amounted to discrimination.

For years many Roma children have been wrongly placed in remedial schools in Hungary and some of its neighbours.

Many Roma communities in Hungary and the neighbouring Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia are blighted by poverty and a high degree of social segregation.

Istvan Horvath and Andras Kiss, from the town of Nyiregyhaza, were born in 1994 and 1992, respectively.

Ruling on their case, the court said the Hungarian school system had failed to provide the necessary safeguards for a disadvantaged minority.

The judgment said Hungarian courts had also acknowledged deficiencies in the way mental abilities were tested.