Barbora Bukovská

Barbora Bukovská is a Czech-Slovak human rights attorney and activist, known^[1][2][3] for her work on racial discrimination of Romani people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She initiated first ever Czech strategic litigation cases concerning discrimination of the Romani in access to public services, housing, employment and within the criminal justice system, even before the anti-discrimination law was adopted and used courts to bring the change.

She is a founder of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, Košice, Slovakia.^[4] In 2002, she uncovered a practice of forced sterilization of Romani women in Slovakia in her controversial report "Body and Soul",^[5] for which she was criminally prosecuted by the Slovak Government. The Slovak Government rejected the report as unfounded; but it was widely supported and backed up internationally, including by the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress,^[6] the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe,^[7] the Amnesty International and others. Since then, she has been representing victims of this practice at the courts.

In 2009, she won a case K.H. and Others vs. Slovakia at the European Court for Human Rights, concerning access of forcibly sterilized women to their medical documents. Subsequently, she won several cases at the European Court for Human Rights concerning forced sterilizations. Those were:

• On 8 November 2011, the case V. C. vs. Slovakia which was referred to as a ground-breaking one.^[8]
• On 8 February 2012, the case N. B. vs. Slovakia which concerned a sterilization of an under-age minor.^[9]
• On 13 November 2012, the case I.G. and Others vs. Slovakia, in which the Court reaffirmed its earlier position but also, for the first time, found that the Slovak authorities also failed to properly investigate the crimes committed by staff of the concerned hospitals; this factor was not addressed in earlier cases.

Further cases are pending at the European and Slovak courts.

Other notable cases at the European Court include

• S. vs Estonia^[10] - concerning involuntary admission to a psychiatric clinic,
• Plesó vs. Hungary^[11] - concerning forced committal to a psychiatric hospital for "prevention treatment" purposes,
• Bures vs. the Czech Republic^[12] - in which the Court stated that unauthorized use of restraint in psychiatric hospital constituted inhuman and degrading treatment,
• Sykora vs. the Czech Republic^[13] - concerning the removal of the legal capacity and detention in a psychiatric hospital, and
• R.K. vs the Czech Republic^[14] - concerning forced sterilization of Romani woman from the Czech Republic.

She received a Woman of the World Award by Marie Claire, USA in 2004.^[15]

In 2006, she published another controversial paper on exploitation of suffering of victims of human righs violations by international human rights organizations at the Cairo conference of the Open Society Institute; the paper was later re-published by PILnet: The Global Network for Public Interest Law ^[16] and Sur Journal.

She is a niece of John Bukovsky, the first papal nuncio in the Russian Federation. She volunteers for Catholic Worker Movement.

References

External links

• Harvard Law Today
• PILNET
• Hearing of the case of V.C. vs Slovakia at the European Court on 22 March 2011
• 2003 Documentary on forced sterilization of Roma women in Slovakia