Foundation laid for establishing the Regional Roma Council

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Tuesday, 21 July 2015 10:21

Western Balkan Decade Focal Points (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) have gathered in the end of July in Belgrade to work on the establishment of a new regional network - Regional Roma Council, whose aim is to ensure participation of Roma civil society in the EU programs to come, as it was the aim of the Decade.

Meeting was also attended by representative of Roma Initiative Office from Budapest and OSF Serbia, while Aleksandra Bojadjieva (DS) attended the meeting via Skype. 

Namely, since the new EU program for Western Balkan countries, Roma Integration 2020, is largely dealing with public administration, putting little focus on civil society, we felt obliged to react and form a network whose main task shall be to advocate for Roma participation and monitor over policies towards the Roma in national countries and Europe and demanding more responsibility from states in that regard, including through more thorough reporting. One of the simultaneous assignments will be to advocate for joint treatment of Roma civil society in Europe, regardless of the status of their country of origin, i.e. being the member of or an aspirant to the membership in the EU. The idea for forming this network lies in the fact that Decade of Roma Inclusion was the only international tool which provided for direct exchange of views between the state and Roma civil society, which is now going to be lost as the Decade is to be closed in September. Our mission is to preserve what was done under auspices of Decade Secretariat and complement these results further through our network. 

Young Roma was represented by Samir Jaha and Dženita Brčvak.