E/CN.4/2000/16/Add.1 page 4 of Roma and human rights organizations. He received assistance from Mr. Andreas Nicklish, Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Prague. A list of contacts is given in the annex to this report. 6. The Special Rapporteur wishes to thank the Czech Government for the consideration and the spirit of cooperation shown by its representatives both prior to and during his visit. He also wishes to express his gratitude to the representatives of non-governmental organizations who were kind enough to furnish information and his thanks to the Director of the United Nations Information Centre for his kind assistance. A. Overview 7. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the Czech Republic opted for a democratic regime and undertook reforms in order better to guarantee human rights. Since 1991 it has had a Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, article 1 of which sets out the principle of the equality of individuals in their dignity and their rights. The Czech Republic is the successor of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, which ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1966, and became a Party to the Convention, which it directly incorporated into its legislation. Despite the ratification, the Czech Republic has not yet adopted legislation prohibiting all forms of racial discrimination. 8. The Czech Republic is also a Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and several other international human rights instruments. Where Europe is concerned, the Czech Republic ratified, inter alia, the European Convention on Human Rights in 1992 and the framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 1997. 9. The democratic reforms did not, however, have a beneficial effect on all components of the Czech population, particularly the Roma; this minority remains exposed to racial discrimination, which is manifested particularly in access to employment, housing and education. The Roma are often excluded from restaurants, swimming pools and discotheques and kept at a distance by the majority of the population, who are prejudiced against them. Violent racist acts by skinheads against members of the minority are common. 10. In the 1991 census, 33,000 persons described themselves as Roma. The law does not oblige individuals to declare their ethnic group but the authorities consider that because of the fear of persecution that persists in the collective memory of the Roma since the Nazi extermination and as a result of the policy of enforced assimilation under the Communist regime, many Roma prefer not to declare their origins. According to official estimates, there may be between 166,000 and 206,000 Roma, although a number of those questioned unofficially put their numbers at 300 or 400,000. 11. The largest group, numbering approximately 170,000, is the so-called Slovak Roma (also called Czechoslovakian or Ukraine-Slovak or “Romungro”, i.e. Hungarian Roma). They speak dialects that are very close to the Romany language of eastern Slovakia, which is basically codified. The second largest group, called the Vlax (Vlaxiko) Roma, has about 18,000 members speaking a different dialect. The Vlaxiko Roma led a nomadic life until 1959. Other ethnic