MINELRES: Romani Activists Statement: Open Society Institute/World Bank Conference

[European Roma Rights Center]

Romani Activists Statement: Open Society Institute/World Bank Conference
July 2, 2003

On June 30, 2003, approximately seventy young Romani leaders from Bulgaria, 
Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and 
Slovakia addressed the governments of their countries with policy 
recommendations regarding the situation of Roma in these countries. The 
statements were presented during the conference "Roma in Expanding Europe: 
Challenges for the Future", held in Budapest, Hungary, June 30-July 1, 
2003, which heralded the inauguration by philanthropist George Soros of a 
"Decade of Roma Inclusion". The statement which follows below is a summary 
of the national Romani delegations' policy recommendations as presented to 
the Prime Ministers participating at the conference, intergovernmental 
organisations, donor institutions and other participants on July 1, 2003 in 
the Hungarian Parliament by Rumyan Russinov, speaker on behalf of the 
Bulgarian Romani delegation to the conference and director of the Open 
Society Institute's Roma Participation Program:

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"Honoured guests, Prime Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am Rumyan Russinov, a Bulgarian Rom, and honoured to represent the 7 Roma 
young leader delegations at the conference. The delegations represent about 
70 Roma activists in our 20s and 30s who were competitively selected to 
participate at this conference.

My task is to present to our Prime Ministers and other guests a synthesis 
of the Roma young leaders vision and policy recommendations from the 7 
participating countries. Many of our delegations held preparatory meetings 
with large numbers of Romani NGOs at home before presenting our 
recommendations yesterday and so you can be sure that
these recommendations are shared by many Roma beyond ourselves.

First and foremost, all delegations have prioritised education, employment 
and housing as the three most important areas to be addressed and noted 
that discrimination runs through all of these areas. In education, we want 
to integrate the school systems; to desegregate the schools and the 
classrooms and to provide equal and quality education to Roma in the 
mainstream school system from pre-school through university. Our main 
recommendations are as follows:
    * obligatory and free pre-school education in desegregated classrooms 
for up to two years for all children;
    * Romani assistants in the classroom especially in pre-school;
    * anti-bias training of teachers and school administrators;
    * engagement of Roma parents in school-based decision-making;
    * no more Roma first grade school children put into Special Schools for 
mentally handicapped children starting in September 2003;
    * school support for Romani children in the transitional period from 
substandard to regular education;
    * social support for disadvantaged Romani families with children at 
school age; integration of Romani history and culture in the textbooks for 
all levels of education.
We know that this will be expensive but we can not imagine that it is more 
expensive than keeping us illiterate and on social benefits for all of our 
lives. We want to participate fully in society and we want to have access 
to equal education and meaningful jobs.

Some specific points raised by the delegations in regard to education were:
    * The Bulgarian delegation insisted that the government establish a 
fund for support of the desegregation of Romani education.
    * The Slovak delegation insisted that the government review the system 
of psychological testing for the placement in special schools and ensure 
that the system does not produce racially disparate effects.
    * The Hungarian delegation emphasised the need to involve Romani 
parents in the educational process of their children and to strengthen the 
relationship between Romani parents and schools.
    * In the Czech Republic, the government should expand the national 
action plan for Roma by establishing regional Roma information centers to 
provide link between Romani communities, local and educational authorities.
    * The delegation of Serbia and Montenegro called the government to 
amend the vocational education curriculum to teach economically adequate 
skills.
    * Affirmative action programmes for Roma in high schools and 
universities were recommended by the delegations of Romania and Serbia and 
Montenegro.
In employment, our main recommendations are:
    * Tax incentives for employers who employ Roma;
    * Access to low-interest credit for small family business of Roma
    * Implementation of programmes for upgrading the qualifications of Roma 
and for teaching Roma skills which are adequate to the demands of the 
labour market;
    * Implementation of counselling programmes for employment and training 
for development of small and medium-size business.
    * The Czech and the Slovak delegations also proposed involvement of 
Roma in government construction tenders and setting aside a percentage of 
such tenders for Roma construction firms.
    * The Bulgarian delegation called on the government to set up a labour 
bureau which provides in-house and per-hour work for Roma and to support 
Roma agricultural business by establishing agricultural business 
consultative centers.
In the area of housing, all delegations called on their governments to 
ensure that Romani housing meets basic standards for adequate housing. To 
solve the issue of Romani housing which is very complicated and combines 
citizenship issues; lack of security of tenure, non-transparent procedures 
of local governments; racism and discrimination, we call upon all countries 
to:
    * Legalise Romani housing and ensure that owners are provided with 
ownership documents;
    * Immediately set up a national watchdog agency to oversee and evaluate 
the distribution of municipal property and the resulting hardships it is 
causing the Roma.
    * In addition, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia we call on the 
governments to cease the practice of segregation and ghettoisation of Roma 
by relocating them from town centers to the peripheries. The Slovak and the 
Macedonian delegations recommended that housing provisions which 
discriminate against Roma preventing them from access to municipal housing 
should be eliminated. In Serbia and Montenegro the government should 
urgently address the housing situation of the internally displaced Roma 
from Kosovo and of the Roma who have been forcefully resettled from Western 
Europe.
All delegations emphasised combating racial discrimination against Roma 
through the adoption of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation 
complying with the requirements of the EU Race Equality Directive. We also 
want to have independent mechanisms set up to monitor implementation of 
anti-discrimination legislation and assist victims of racial discrimination 
in seeking remedies. Furthermore, it is necessary to train police, judges 
and other law enforcement agencies to implement anti-discrimination law 
well and swiftly.

Other areas underscored in particular countries are:
    * In Romania, the delegation demanded that the government should 
recognise the Roma slavery and the Holocaust through public apology along 
with urgent adoption of a package of reparatory measures. Furthermore, the 
delegation called on the government to create an adequate framework for 
ensuring the cultural autonomy of Roma by setting up Roma identity 
promotion institutions such as schools specialised in Romani language and 
graduate education in Romani language.
    * In Hungary, the delegation stressed the need to establish formal 
channels of dialogue between grassroots, national NGOs, intergovernmental 
organisations and the government. The delegation called on the government 
to provide support for Roma community centers and establish non-profit 
development agencies to train Romani activists committed to the grassroots.
    * In Macedonia, the delegation called on the government to set up a 
government commission on Roma to advise it on Romani policy issues and to 
adopt a national plan for the improvement of the situation of Roma in the 
country.
Finally, we want to have broad-based Roma and Roma NGO representation in 
all matters of local and national government which affect us. We want to be 
at the table making decisions about our future. We also call on the EU to 
make sure that Roma are broadly involved in design, implementation and 
evaluation of all PHARE and future EU spending on Roma projects in our 
countries; and we call on the EU to guarantee us that once our countries 
become members of the EU, the National Action Plans and any interim 
memoranda preceding our accession solidly anchor the Roma issues in them.

We fully support the idea of the Decade of Roma Inclusion as a critical 
mechanism to close the ever-widening gaps between Roma and non-Roma in our 
countries and to finally include us as full and equal citizens of our 
countries and in the European Union."