MINELRES: Romania: Ethnic minority briefs, No.8

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Original sender: Mediafax <divers@mediafax.ro>

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No. 8 / May 20, 2002

DIVERS
- reporting ethnic diversity -


SUMMARY
1. FIRST SANCTION FOR PUBLISHING DISCRIMINATING ADVERTISMENT
2. AGREEMENT ON CHURCH PROPERTIES RESTITUTION
3. LAW FOR THE RESTITUTION OF GOLD SEIZED DURING COMMUNIST REGIME

OPINION
4. PHARE PROJECT IMPROVEMENT OF THE ROMA SITUATION IN ROMANIA - 
ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
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FIRST SANCTION FOR PUBLISHING DISCRIMINATING ADVERTISMENT
BUCHAREST - Local authorities in Romanian capital Bucharest last week
penalized private company "R" SA, which edits leading daily newspaper
"Romania Libera", for having published a discriminating advertisement.
"By the contents of the ad in question, it breaks the legal
provisions, because it includes discrimination related to ethnic
identity. The reference <<Roma excluded >> represents the issue of
discrimination in this case", stated lawyer Dezideriu Gergely.
The presence of such discriminating ads into the Romanian newspapers
is often a common practice being also indicated into the country
Report of the European Commission for 2001.
Last year, on the address of Romania's Ombudsman have arrived 7,400
complaints, part of them being sent by persons of national minorities.
About 50 complaints came from Roma people indicating the treatment
they have been subject to during penal investigations or the cases
when they were refused to enter a disco or a private restaurant.
(DIVERS)

AGREEMENT ON CHURCH PROPERTIES RESTITUTION
BUCHAREST - The Romanian ruling party PSD and the Hungarian Democratic
Union of Romania (UDMR) last week agreed that by the end of June to
pass into the Parliament the law regarding the restitution of church
communities' properties. The list encloses most of the buildings
belonging to the Magyar traditional churches in Transylvania.
About 100 retrocession trials involving Hungarian churches and
individuals are now taking place in Cluj city (central Transylvania),
and the UDMR wants the judicial process to be speeded up. (DIVERS)

LAW FOR THE RESTITUTION OF GOLD SEIZED DURING COMMUNIST REGIME
BUCHAREST - The Romanian Official Gazette on May 13 published the law
to enact the government emergency ordinance as regards the regime of
precious metals, of which two paragraphs refer to the pursed methods
able to give back the gold seized during the communist regime.
Therefore, the Roma people whose golden objects had been abusively
seized, breaking the regulations in force, may request their
restitution in court in one year time since the law's coming into
effect. The restitution is possible only if persons in question hold
minutes proving the seize. (DIVERS)


OPINION

PHARE PROJECT IMPROVEMENT OF THE ROMA SITUATION IN ROMANIA -
ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
by Rupert Wolfe Murray*

Although it is too early to say that there has been an improvement of
the Roma situation in Romania (and is this possible in 2 years?) we
can point to some real progress in a number of fields. In the first
place a national strategy for the improvement of the Roma situation
has been adopted by the current government. Secondly, a total of 40
pilot projects have been implemented all over Romania and these are
both testing the Roma strategy, as well as providing local
authorities, NGOs and Roma representative groups with positive
examples of what can be done, and how local partnerships (between Roma
group and local authority) can lead to real communication and
progress. Indeed, we believe that only these local partnerships can
lead to an improvement of the Roma situation at the local level.
Finally, there are a number of "by products" (to borrow a phrase from
the manufacturing industry) which have been produced by the various
sub-contracts carried out by our project. The most public of these was
the Journalists'Good Practice Guide produced by a group of journalists
with the Center for Independent Journalists. This ethical guide aims
to prevent journalists from writing about minorities in a prejudices
manner, and has been supplied to the newsrooms of all main media in
Romania.

One of the problems we faced at the beginning of the project was the
lack of coherent information that was available on the Roma population
in Romania. Although there had been a number of studies done there was
not a single source where all these could be found, and it was clear
that the results from such research was not being made available to
the competent government authorities. A series of sub-contracts with
appropriate research organizations resulted in the following products:
An analysis of all projects carried out in Roma communities in Romania
in the last 10 years (over 1000 projects); a listing of all serious
research papers carried out on the Roma, and information about how to
access these. Our most recent research product, published by the
Institute for the Quality of Life, is a series of indicators about the
Roma population (covering housing, health, education, work, migration
and discrimination).

The two main objectives of this project were to provide the government
of Romania with technical assistance in order to develop public
policies for the improvement of the Roma situation, and to manage a
900,000 EURO grant fund. To what extent were these objectives
achieved?

In our first year of operation, all efforts were on developing a White
Paper for the improvement of the Roma situation, a draft policy
document that was to be built from "the bottom up". This involved
consulting with all ministries, as well as the Roma representatives in
GLAR (Working Group of Roma Associations). The first result of this
work was the Strategic Framework, a document which was adopted in
December 2000.

Following elections in December 2000, a new government was elected
under the leadership of the PSDR (now PSD) party. This party has shown
considerable political will in developing a coherent policy towards
the Roma, and the Strategy for the Improvement of the Roma Situation
was adopted in April 2001. This strategy includes 123 practical
measures that are in the process of being implemented by all
ministries, regional and local authorities, and has led to the
appointment of Roma advisors in all prefectures and ministries. The
adoption of the Roma strategy by the Romanian government was a real
challenge to our project team, and we began looking at practical ways
of supporting its implementation. The technical assistance component
of the project was subsequently re-adjusted to provide support for the
implementation of the strategy by the National Office for the Roma
(NOR).

A series of activities, aimed at supporting the implementation of the
strategy, were agreed between the project team and NOR. These
activities included the budgeting of measures in the strategy,
proposing monitoring and implementation structures, providing a
variety of feedback regarding the implementation of the Partnership
Fund for the Roma and various research activities mentioned above. The
most public activities which were carried out in support of the
strategy's implementation were the conferences and the training
programme. The first conference was an international one and was
organized (and co-funded by) in partnership with the Romanian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and OSCE.

What can be learned from the Partnership Fund? In April 2002, the
final payments were made to the projects which were funded by the
Partnership Fund for the Roma and the projects came to an end. A total
of 40 projects had been funded and these were located in most regions
of Romania and covered all the sectors mentioned in the government's
strategy for the improvement of the Roma situation (housing, health,
education, culture, etc). There were two main objectives for the PFR:
To encourage partnerships between public institutions and local Roma
representative groups, and to test the government strategy through a
number of community level projects in the various sectors. Both these
objectives have been fully realized.

Dynamic, interesting and sustainable projects have been implemented in
all domains, between a wide range of public institutions (schools,
village town and city halls, regional inspectorates, prefectures) and
Roma organizations (NGOs and initiative groups). There is something to
be learned for everyone in every government and nongovernmental
organization-all of whom should be encouraged to form partnerships in
order to help improve the Roma situation. While there is not space to
describe all the activities which have been funded, we can outline the
diversity of work that has been funded. Farming, a Roma community
center in Arad, an environmental project in Caras Severin, new schools
in Sibiu and Caransebes, renovation of blocks, getting i/d papers, a
social canteen in Cugir, social projects which aim to increase school
attendance and decrease delinquency, vocational and pre-school
education projects, health projects (training health mediators).

A number of sustainable economic projects, which will expand in years
to come and employ more Roma people, were also funded. In Mures a
sawmill and a crafts workshop were established, building-supplies
workshops were established and also a number of brickworks. Some of
these are managed by Roma organizations (in Baia Mara and Galati)
while others have been set up by the local town hall (Bicaz and
Aninoasa). All of them are worth watching in years to come, to see
what long term benefits come to the local community.

One of the big challenges facing the project team regarding the PF was
how to communicate the success stories that had been shown by these
projects. One of the problems with many grant-funded projects is that,
however successful they may be, they are not usually known about by
others working in the same field (not to mention the general public,
who rarely know anything about these grant-funds). We believe that
without a big effort in communicating the lessons learned from these
projects there will be little chance that the models developed here
will be known about or repeated.


* Rupert Wolfe Murray is the team leader of MEDE Consultancy which
provided technical assistance to the Government of Romania in
developing a national strategy for the Roma and funds for projects on
the improvement of the Roma situation.

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