A/HRC/44/40/Add.2 64. Spanish policies for eliminating pervasive child poverty are shamefully inadequate and represent both a moral failure and a self-inflicted economic wound.102 C. Roma 65. Spain has one of the largest Roma communities in the European Union, approximately 750,000 people or 1.6 per cent of the population, 103 but official employment and social indicators do not provide disaggregated statistics, on the grounds that doing so would contravene constitutional protections against discrimination. That is a deeply problematic interpretation, which helps to make the situation of the Roma people officially invisible. Ministry of Education officials insisted they were not permitted to collect data on Roma children, yet the widely-respected surveys undertaken by the Fundación Secretariado Gitano show that Roma people face staggeringly high rates of poverty and disadvantage in Spain. 66. More than 80 per cent of the Roma population face poverty or social exclusion and 46 per cent are extremely poor, with a monthly income below 310 euros. The child poverty rate stands at 89 per cent and unemployment at 52 per cent. Roma women suffer a clear disadvantage in all areas, with an employment rate that only reaches 16 per cent and large numbers of Roma children attend de facto segregated schools, with only 17 per cent of those over 16 completing secondary education or higher. 104 A 2016 survey carried out by the European Union found that among Roma people, 98 per cent were at risk of poverty, 97 per cent had some difficulty making ends meet, and just 16 per cent were employed. 105 67. The Special Rapporteur visited two Roma communities, in Polígono Sur in Andalusia and Cañada Real just outside Madrid. Although these are extreme examples, not necessarily representative of the conditions of most Roma in Spain, the extent to which the relevant governmental authorities appear to have abandoned people is nevertheless shocking. In both places, residents were engaged in a losing battle to secure basic government support or services. In Cañada Real, people were living without a clinic, employment centre, school, or even legal electricity, on an unpaved road directly adjacent to incinerators in an area deemed hazardous to human health. Despite an agreement in 2018 to relocate them from the area, only 34 families have so far benefited and officials in Madrid could not provide any definitive date by which the rest would be safely relocated. Arrangements for meaningful consultation also appeared to be lacking, despite the existence of various formal structures for that purpose. 68. The Special Rapporteur also received troubling reports of Roma people living in dire circumstances in the Los Asperones shanty town in Malaga, lacking adequate shelter and public services for the past 30 years. The Government of Andalusia has not responded to an intervention by the Andalusian Ombudsman and inexplicably could not provide the Special Rapporteur with any information about its plans for the neighbourhood. 69. Government officials agreed that the situation of many Roma people was dire, but were apparently resigned to accepting that the relevant groups had been relegated to thirdclass status without access to most of the rights to which they are entitled. Some officials seemed only concerned to have ticked certain action boxes and cared little about achieving any tangible results. Years of undoubtedly well-intentioned plans and benchmarks have left Roma poverty indicators at deplorable levels. There is now a real need for a crisis-level mobilization. 102 103 104 105 Alto Comisionado para la Lucha contra la Pobreza Infantil, “DB012 – mapa territorializado de la pobreza infantil en España”. European Commission, Country Report Spain 2019, p. 56. Fundación Secretariado Gitano, “The Fundación Secretariado Gitano presents a ‘Comparative study on the situation of the Roma population in Spain in relation to employment and poverty’”, (September 2019). European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, “Second European Union minorities and discrimination survey: Roma – selected findings” (November 2016), pp. 14, 15 and 18. 15