copenhagen denmark – On a frigid morning in Copenhagen, Loredana was resting on a chair inside a crowded shelter for homeless people and drug users.
People are chatting everywhere, but she's alone in a corner with her hands on her knees. She is wearing her billowing skirt, several thick sweaters, and a windbreaker that hugs her small body. Deep wrinkles cover her 25-year-old face.
The shopping cart next to her is overflowing with a stack of soaking wet magazines.
“I can't sell it anymore,” she says in a quiet voice.
Loredana is partially mute and deaf, so it takes her a while to understand and be understood.
“How can I buy food?” she asked, raising her hands in frustration.
Like many Roma women in Copenhagen, she is here with her husband and the rest of her family has returned to their homeland in Romania.
Across Eastern Europe, most Roma families live below the poverty line. Some people move west because they want to send money to relatives.
“I have four children in Romania,” says Loredana. “My parents will take care of us while we are here.”
But getting a job was difficult.
Like the average 20 percent of Romani people, she is illiterate. Being deaf and dumb doesn't help her, and there is also discrimination.
Across Europe, Roma are the most vulnerable and prejudiced minority.
A 2019 study in Denmark found that ethnic minorities are positioned as “lacking useful qualities'' in policy and media discussions. This will limit access to the Danish labor market. Administrative “catch-22” creates new barriers.
In Denmark, some employers and landlords ask for your social security number before offering you work or housing. But getting that number depends on having an employment contract and address in the first place. As a result, low-skilled immigrants like Loredana have few job options and are forced into homelessness.
Some Roma women in Copenhagen collect bottles and deposit them at return centers in exchange for cash.
Other companies like Loredana sell magazines called Strada or Street, which are sold only by street-based people, much like Britain's Big Issue.
Homeless people pay 20 kroner ($2.91) for each magazine and sell it for 40 kroner ($5.83), making a profit of 20 kroner.
Loredana reached into the folds of her jacket and pulled out a court order with the last paragraph recommending deportation.
What crime prompted this threat? Sitting in front of a grocery store, holding out your hand and calling out to passersby, “Please,” “Give me some food.”
In legal terms, Loredana violated article 197 of the Danish Penal Code, which prohibits begging despite warnings. She had also been in front of the supermarket, but this was a “much worse” situation.
The warning in question came after a police officer told Loredana to stop. This is the second time she has broken the same law.
“For the first time, they sent me and my husband to prison,” she explains. “We just came out recently.”
She kept the court order hidden and then pulled out a photo of the ultrasound scan. She rubs her stomach.
“I'm several months pregnant,” she says.
In fact, she was clearly pregnant when she was imprisoned.
Banning begging means banning Roma
“Denmark has one of the strictest begging laws in Europe,” says human rights lawyer Pia Justesen, who has investigated several begging cases in recent years.
“Only Hungary has a similar law commensurate with its level of stringency.”
In 2017, Denmark's then Minister of Justice Søren Pape Poulsen said he was aiming to “eradicate the Roma”.
That year, Denmark passed a series of laws explicitly targeting “foreign visitors” on the country's streets.
Outlawed “insecurity-producing” camps for homeless people. A zoning ban was implemented. and strengthened existing laws against begging.
“Begging has been illegal here for hundreds of years. But in 2017, parliament decided to abolish so-called 'coercive' begging,” Justsen explains.
“If you beg in any of four places: on a pedestrian street, in front of or inside a supermarket, on public transport or in a train station, you are automatically considered 'threatening'. There is no need to be intimidating. .The only thing that matters is the location.”
Before 2017, if you were caught begging, you were given a warning. He currently faces a 14-day unconditional sentence for begging as a first-time offender.
These measures affect members of the Roma community, but Justesen says Denmark is not doing enough to raise awareness about its laws.
“There are many cases where people have been convicted for sitting in plastic boxes with paper cups in front of them, even though they did not extend their hands or look at passersby,” Justsen said. says. “With panhandling laws, you can be convicted even if you are passive.”
In Copenhagen, it is estimated that around 62 percent of homeless people are Danish.
Although there are no reliable figures for people who identify as Roma, from 2017 to 2023, 84 percent of convicted individual beggars in Denmark were Romanians and Bulgarians.
Criminalizing homelessness and compromising reproductive health care
For pregnant Roma women, poverty increases the risk of obstetric complications. The begging law criminalizes one of the only options for Roma women to earn money in Denmark, and this has serious implications for their reproductive health.
“Roma women experience widespread lack of access when it comes to reproductive health care, including prenatal and antenatal care,” said Bernard Rourke, an advocate and police officer at the European Roma Rights Center.
While Danish residents have the right to receive treatment through the public system, undocumented immigrants like Loredana can only receive medical care at state-run hospitals and clinics if their symptoms are deemed acute.
Pregnancy itself is not considered an acute illness. In Danish health law, this term only applies to the physical act of unterm pregnancy and childbirth.
“The main challenge is that, due to the health law, we are not always able to provide antenatal and postnatal care to the women who come to us,” says Ditte Dandanell Bir, head of national activities at Caritas Denmark.
The NGO runs a clinic in Copenhagen that accepts anonymous patients. “Additionally, our volunteer physician staff is experiencing confusion about what is considered 'acute,'” Beal says. “They are not necessarily sure whether a woman’s symptoms are serious enough to direct her to the state-run health system.”
In 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Denmark provide full access to health care to undocumented children and pregnant women. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights followed suit, issuing the same recommendation in 2019.
But the law remains the same.
“For racialized women such as Roma women, there is an inherent confusion in begging laws. That confusion exacerbates poor health outcomes and has particularly negative consequences for women with family responsibilities. ” Rourke added. “And incarceration fundamentally disrupts everything, not to mention the impact it has on mental health.”
International organizations have regularly criticized begging laws. For example, in 2021 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged Denmark to repeal the law, to no avail. In 2023, a network of lawyers across the European Union filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights for third-party intervention, arguing that Denmark's ban on begging was illegal. They are currently waiting for the court to rule on the case.
“What bothers me is that we're trying to solve social problems by putting people in prison,” Justsen says.
