Strategic documents for the improvement of the position of the Romani community in the past two decades

Having in mind the difficult situation of Roma men and women who mostly live in Central and Southeast Europe, at the initiative of the World Bank, the Open Society Fund and the European Commission, the period from 2005 to 2015 was declared the Decade of Roma. The Decade of Roma was a development program aimed at contributing to the faster improvement of the socio-economic status of the Roma population and the reduction of its poverty. The signatories of this agreement were the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as Serbia.

What Serbia has certainly done continuously with regard to the inclusion of Roma men and women is the adoption of various strategic documents aimed at improving the status of the Romani community. As Serbia was the presiding country of the Decade of Roma in 2008, it adopted the Strategy for Improving the Position of Roma in the Republic of Serbia in 2009, and after it expired another strategy was adopted in March 2016, called “Strategy for the social inclusion of Roma men and women for the period 2016-2025 ”, which was revised in February this year with a validity period of 2022-2030.

The goal of all strategic documents adopted so far is to lay the foundations for improving the position of Roma in the Republic of Serbia and reduce the gap between the Roma population and the rest of the population and create a basis for identifying and implementing affirmative action measures, especially in education, health , employment, housing and social protection.

After the Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted the first Strategy in 2009, it adopted numerous action plans in the field of education, health care, employment, housing, social protection, media, culture and the fight against discrimination.

Numerous action plans were made in the context of the Decade of Roma 2005-2015 and in terms of implementation in accordance with various reports, especially the European Commission's reports on Serbia's progress, there was some progress and improvement of the status of the Roma community, but not enough. An increasing number of Romani assistants, coordinators of Romani ethnicity, health mediators have been employed every year, a limited number of scholarships from the state budget and the budget of Vojvodina for high school and university students have been provided, the Law on National Councils has been adopted and according to the conclusions of the third Roma seminar held in June 2015, good progress was made in terms of citizens' records, given that in 2012 amendments to the Law on Out-of-Court Procedure was adopted, which enabled many members of the Romani national minority easier, faster and simpler procedure for subsequent registration of birth records, while in all other areas progress has been slow and uneven. Subsequent registration of unregistered citizens led to a decline in the number of "legally invisible persons". What was generally a problem was that the resources for implementing the action plans at the national and local levels that accompanied the Strategy were extremely small, as is the case now, and governments relied heavily on donor assistance.

So, as for the first Decade of Roma, it is indisputable that it did not give certain results, which was opposed by "official" Romani representatives in the Secretariat for National Romani Strategy at the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, as well as leaders within the League of the Decade of Roma office, however, the fact is that there is no precise public report on the progress made in the Decade of Roma. If we consider the involvement of Roma at the level of rhetoric of the Government and Roma civil society, the general impression is that Roma are talked about only in terms of projects and sporadic measures, but not in terms of programs and integrated policies. The Government of Serbia pointed out that during the first Decade of Roma, certain results were achieved in connection with the permanent improvement of the position of Roma men and women, namely: amendments to the Law on Out-of-Court Procedure enabled subsequent registration and exercising of those rights; the coverage of Roma children in primary education has been increased and affirmative measures have been established for the enrollment of Romani students in secondary schools and faculties; the approach to the exercise of certain rights has been improved due to the introduction of Romani representatives in the process of exercising public policies (pedagogical assistants, health mediators, coordinators for Romani issues). Nevertheless, the main obstacles to the socio-economic integration of Roma men and women have not been removed and a complete normative basis for implementing long-term measures to reduce poverty and achieve essential equality of Romani citizens, which were the goals of Strategy for Improvement of the Status of Roma in the Republic of Serbia 2009-2015. “ Therefore, the "Strategy for Social Inclusion of Roma for the period from 2016 to 2025" was adopted, together with the action plan. The main reason for adopting the Strategy is to create conditions for their social inclusion - poverty reduction and combating discrimination against Roma men and women, i.e. to create conditions for full access to the realization of human rights of Roma persons. In addition, the reasons for the adoption of this Strategy stemmed from the need to create preconditions for achieving the mentioned strategic goals.

After the adoption of the Strategy, a body was established to monitor the implementation of the Strategy, but the body rarely met, which was a big problem. The strategy had five key areas to work on, which are essential to improving the position of the Romani community: housing, education, employment, health and social protection, which areas that allegedly represent an obstacle to the inclusion of the Romani national minority in Serbia.

During its six-year term, the Strategy has yielded only symbolic results, but there have been several unfulfilled goals, which continues to greatly affect the poor position of the Romani community. Regarding the field of education, according to the European Commission's Progress Report on Serbia from 2020 and 2021, the number of Roma students who used scholarships increased, and a total of 2,220 Roma students were enrolled in high schools in 2018/2019, compared to 1,969 students. in 2017/2018. years. However, dropout rates remain high, especially for Romani girls. Segregation in education needs to be addressed. The coverage of Romani children in pre-school education is still very small; only 9% of Romani children attend kindergarten. The percentage of those completing tertiary education is still extremely low, namely 1% compared to 16% of the non-Roma population. Romani students are still overrepresented in special schools (18%) and special classes (35%). A survey conducted by the ORS in February 2022 shows that the Romani community sees the field of education as the one with the most progress in the last two decades. As many as 63.3% of respondents agreed with the statement that Romani policies have led to improvements in education. At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Romani children, mostly from informal settlements, had difficulty accessing the technical prerequisites for participating in online education. The transition from education to the labor market is a particular challenge for young Roma. According to reports, local mobile teams encouraged unemployed Roma to register and participate in active employment measures through field activities. However, low levels of education remained a key barrier to employment. Informal employment is declining, but remains high among the Romani population, and the gap in informal employment is largest in the Western Balkans region. The job description for local Romani coordinators, pedagogical assistants and health mediators is still not harmonized and has not become an integral part of local self-government services. In addition, Roma remain underrepresented in public administration. Since 2018, the European Commission has been emphasizing in each of its subsequent reports that there are no Roma men and women in public administration and that this should be worked on. Our movement has launched an initiative on this issue, the President of the Republic of Serbia has promised that 100 Roma men and women will be employed in the state administration, but there is still no progress. The already mentioned research shows that the perception of the Romani community agrees with the official data; only 31.5% of respondents agreed that Romani policy had led to improvements in employment.

As far as the area of ​​housing is concerned, the situation is virtually unchanged, there are only symbolic results thanks to the activities of international organizations. Primarily the European Commission, UNOPS, HELP, UNDP, KPMG / u, but there was a five-year delay in adopting a national housing strategy in line with the 2016 Housing Act. Almost 20% of the population of mapped Romani settlements do not have access or have irregular access to safe drinking water, over 55% of the population of these settlements have no access or irregular access to the sewerage network, and 14.5% of the population of mapped Romani settlements have no access or irregular access electricity. These deficiencies are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Legalization of Romani settlements, as required by the Poznan Declaration, should be treated as a priority. Forced evictions continue to occur, which is not in line with the housing law. This law needs to be implemented effectively, especially the provisions prescribing housing support and the procedure for relocating informal settlements. Also, our research has shown that the public states that there has been the least progress in this area in the last 20 years. Substandard Romani settlements are still undeveloped, without electricity, drinking water and sewerage networks. In recent years, civil society has launched an initiative to legalize sustainable Romani settlements, but there are still no concrete results. The results of the survey tell us that only 20% of respondents agree with the statement that Romani policies have led to improvements in the field of housing.

As far as personal documents are concerned, which are the basis for exercising the basic constitutionally guaranteed rights, there is progress. Most Roma men and women in Serbia have personal documents. A decision devised by the Ministry of the Interior, the Protector of Citizens and the UNHCR to enable the registration of residence of persons without an official address by registering at Social Work Centers has led to more Roma registering their residence, according to reports, but as for the situation on the ground it is the Ministry of the Interior that is blocking this process due to the lack of regular residence in informal settlements and the majority, especially internally displaced persons, are being denied, which prevents the Romani community from having health insurance and social protection. The institution of the Commissioner made a certain recommendation to the Ministry of the Interior on how they should act in these proceedings, given that various strategic documents adopted by the Government pointed out the problem of the Romani community due to living in informal settlements, therefore we hope that in the near future, the Ministry of the Interior will act on these recommendations, because otherwise the provisions of the highest legal act, the Constitution, are violated, regarding basic human rights, which are thus disabled for the Romani community, such as the right to health care. According to our research, the opinion of respondents is that although the introduction of health mediators is one of the most successful projects in efforts to improve the position of the Romani community, access to health care is extremely low, both due to high discrimination and lack of personal documents.

Conclusion

Findings and reports from the period before the outbreak of coronavirus indicate inadequate living conditions in substandard Romani settlements in Serbia, whose residents face a lack of access to basic infrastructure and utilities (electricity, clean drinking water and sanitation), education and health services, sustainable sources of income etc. The emergence of coronavirus has further contributed to the increase in vulnerability, both in terms of health and socio-economic risks.

For the implementation of the Strategy for Social Inclusion of Roma men and women for the period from 2016 to 2025, in June 2017, an action plan for the period from 2017 to 2018 was adopted, while an action plan for the period from 2019 to 2020 in not adopted at all. For the adoption of the action plan, it is envisaged that the Romani community will participate in it, which knows best what its needs are, but it is, as we could see, excluded from that process.

For the realization of the Strategy, but also for the overall integration capacity, it is extremely important how society and institutions react to affirmative measures that support Roma men and women to overcome obstacles related to access to rights, but so far we have witnessed the fact that society reacts violently, considering that the Romani community is being provided with “special care” and that in that way something belonging to them is taken away, for the sake of the interests of the Romani community, which is not the case at all. There are more and more cases of discrimination, both by the majority population and by the competent institutions, especially the media, which increasingly, despite condemnations and criticism, label the Romani community in the worst possible way, thus spreading racial, religious and national hatred and intolerance. The competent regulatory body for electronic media does not react to cases of discrimination against Roma men and women in the media, does not initiate proceedings either through official proceedings or private reports, and the European Commission's assessment of the Regulatory Body is that it should be independent and always incapable of controlling and sanctioning media service providers in terms of their programming that they place on the public.

From all of the above, it is clear that there have been small changes, but they are insufficient to improve the situation of the Romani community. The subjective feeling is that there is more and more backwardness in terms of integration and that even stagnation is an extremely mild word. The Serbian Government responded to this situation with a new, revised Strategy for Social Inclusion of Roma men and women for the period 2022-2030, which was adopted without consensus, many NGOs did not participate in its adoption, and since its adoption it is not available on the websites of the competent institutions, which speaks in favor of the presented and catastrophic situation in which the Romani community finds itself. Documents are being passed only, and there is no significant progress. What is also interesting is that the perception of the Romani community coincides with the reports, when we talk about the effects of strategic documents and state policies for Roma men and women. This tells us that within the Romani community there is a clear idea in which areas we need to work further, which measures will not give results and what we lack in order to get the desired results. Therefore, it is necessary for Roma men and women to be in places where decisions are made, especially decisions concerning the Romani community, as well as to be involved in the implementation of all such actions.

Unfortunately, there will be no progress as long as "vote buying" is present as a general phenomenon in the Republic of Serbia, where the Romani community is most often targeted by political parties, thanks to the difficult economic situation, with no response from authorities, although that is a criminal offence. This, in turn, leads to the manifestation of hatred and intolerance of the majority population towards Roma men and women, and the blame for rigged elections is being put on the Roma. The gist of it is that the entire system is at fault, as it uses the poorest and the most vulnerable, by means blackmail and threat, not allowing the Romani community to self-organize politically.