International Roma Decade (2005-2015) started on 2 February
Better life for the most marginalized minority in Europe
Roma Decade 2005-2015 should be a turning point for 12 million Roma people, who are the poorest minority in Europe, being constantly on the margins of the social currencies, discriminated in many countries, beaten up on the streets just because of their darker skin colour, the only minority in Europe still living in ghettos. The International Roma Decade started officially on 2 February with the conference at the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. The Decade’s objectives are: including the Roma people in the social life, their education, poverty reduction as well as improving their standard of housing. But, in what conditions is the decade welcomed by the Macedonian Romas?
According to the official sources, there are 65 000 Romas living in Macedonia. Most of them, that is about 85% live on social help, in settlements that lack the necessary infrastructure, in substandard conditions, isolated by the rest of the population, and many of them, seeing no other way out, start begging on the streets. Of the 400 registered children on the streets, all are Romas. The picture of the degree of Roma education is also grim. Of the 7,868 Romas who enrolled at school, only less than 600 completed primary education. Most of the Macedonian homeless people come from Roma families. Only five percent of the Romas are employed in the public enterprises, receiving minimum salary. However, the most frightening thing is that the Roma story repeats itself – from generation to generation. They seem to be stuck in an enchanted circle of which there is no way out…
“I live by the river Vardar with my five and our five children, in a house made of cardboard and aluminum. I’m not sure if you can call it a real home. No, we don’t have a floor, and the word you’re asking me about, that infr….I cannot even pronounce it. You mean, water, electricity? No, we have no water, I use the water from Vardar from the nearby public fountains for drinking. The children don’t go to school. Sometimes we beg and sometimes if we find paper we sell it”, says the thirty-year-old Alil Arievski, who also told us that he was illiterate, that his wife with his youngest child begged in buildings, that the other children sometimes beg around the Skopje settlements, and if they find water a cloth, they wipe windscreens at the crossroads. For several moths, Arievski’s children were sheltered at the childrens’ orphanage. “I cannot leave them there forever. They are my children. Maybe they have food and a bed there, but I couldn’t live without them…”says Alil’s wife.
Romas, who are the poorest inhabitants a country like Macedonia, where 35 of the population are unemployed, are facing another problem – the quiet discrimination. Although we want to be proud that Romas in Macedonia are the best integrated in comparison with the other countries in the region of South-eastern Europe, they are discriminated when it comes to employment, court cases or conflicts with the police authorities. The researches have shown that the non-Roma population in Macedonia look down on Romas, As many as 59% of the poled said they have an aversion to Romas. Can we change the attitude of the non-Roma population towards the Romas by breaking the stereotypes?
“I think that we, the Romas, can prove that things can be different, that we don’t have to beg or live on other people’s mercifulness. We have to understand that only education can help us come out of the enchanted circle where the illiterate parents raise children who will also remain uneducated since there is no one to show them the right way. We can raise our natural talents on academic level. For example, everybody says that Roma people are natural; music talents, they love our songs. So, I decided that Roma talent which I posses to raise on academic level.”, says Bilen Eminov, student at the Music Academy, who comes to the “Romaveritas” Centre at the Open Society Institute – Macedonia everyday. Bilen Emonov is one of the 64 student-fellows of this foundation, which has also provided scholarships for 256 high-school students, 900 primary-school pupils and 179 children at kindergartens throughout Macedonia.
The question that is imposed to us is how can Romas make the great step – how to change their status of a marginalized social group to equal members of the society and become involved in the institutions of the system. “Only with joint efforts can we accomplish the goals of the Roma Decade. It means that we cannot expect that Roma people alone, without support from the others overcome all obstacles. The non-Roma population cannot as well say to the Romas ‘from tomorrow on you will live as we think you should’. I think that the work of the civic sector is highly important for the Roma Decade, and a special emphasis is given to the cooperation between the Roma civil society organizations and the other CSOs”, says Vladimir Lazovski from the Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation, project - associate on “Applied education for young Romas”, a project that has been going on in 11 towns in the country.
The following is a fact: Roma people in Macedonia have their own political parties, their representative in the Parliament, their media, and only here in Macedonia in the whole Europe, they have their own municipality, Suto Orizari with over 30 000 inhabitants. However, it is also a fact that it is the poorest municipality in Macedonia, without the necessary infrastructure, with the biggest number of social cases, with two primary schools where the working conditions are miserable, with a hospital dispensary that doesn’t work, and in this municipality there isn’t a primary health protection.
“Where the Roma settlements start, the infrastructure ends. Romas have no decent places to live, they are the most neglected ones in Macedonia. Therefore, I hope that the Roam Decade will not only stay on paper and that it will really contribute to a better status of Romas. At the same time, I believe that the process of decentralization will be also implemented successfully at the only Roma municipality since it will strengthen the positions of the local structures that will be able to influence the quality of life of all inhabitants”, explained Nezdet Mustafa, the only Roma member in the parliament.
As many things (not to say everything) depend on the parties, it is obvious that the success of the Roma decade will depend on the financial help that the country provides. Namely, the Rom decade is not going to be financed by the international organizations, but the governments of the eight countries from Central and Southeastern Europe that are part of it. They will have to find their own means for implementing the foreseen strategies or hope for favourable credits by the World Bank.
“When we are talking about solving the Roma people’s problems, we have to see to it as a process which is expected to last long in order to show positive results. It means that those who are involved in the process, the Government, the Roma community and their representatives, as well as the general public in Macedonia, should be persistent in their attempts to realize the tasks of the Strategy”, says Natasha Gaber from the Institute for Sociological and Lagel – Political Researches, who, together with Aneta Jovevska prepared the National Strategy for Roma Integration. “Romas are the most vulnerable category. As such, we cannot consider only one problem, but the mixture of many. Personally, I think that the most urgent problem is the housing, which together with it involves the education, health care and employment. Any positive changes in these areas will encourage improvement in the other areas”, said Gaber.
The Roma Decade is going on. Many of the Romas neither know nor have heard of it. Most of them hope for a better tomorrow and look for way to survive the day. However, many of them have done the right step. They finished high school, went to university, got a job and continue to perfect themselves. They prove that Roma people can and are able to do it.
Roma Integration in Slovakia and Macedonia by Eben Friedman
Macedonia – the only national country in the world which raised the Roma language on the level of official usage
“If many of the post-communist regimes have in common the fact that they are “stubbornly rejecting to recognize the gypsies as a national minority, even as an ethnic group, as well as the constant attempts to decrease the statistic value of the gipsy community, than Macedonia is an exception of both (Dimitrijavik 1993:66). The Macedonian census from 1994 does not only show Macedonia as a modern Balkan national country, with the biggest number of officially recognized languages, but it also makes it ‘the only national country in the world which raised the Roma language on the level of official usage’. The importance of such usage leis not only in its legitimization as a specific Roma identity, but also in the progress of the standardization of the Roma language for official use outside the census needs”. (Eben Friedman, “Roma Integration in Slovakia and Macedonia – comparative analysis”, Skopje, 2005).
“I must admit that while I was living in the United States I had no opportunity to meet a representative from the Roma minority”, says Eben Friedman, American political scientist. “Of course, I used to hear about Gypsies, but in a very negative connotation. But, when I came to Slovenia and when I met the Romas, I got a completely different picture about them. They are people with good things and flaws, as most of us are. However, the reason why I started the research was because I noticed that the Roma population lived separately from the non-Roma population. I was interested why was that so. I was doing the researches in several different countries, but I focused my attention to Macedonia and Slovakia as two opposites – to Macedonia, as a country where the Roma people are best integrated, and Slovakia, where they are extremely discriminated, where they literally live in ghettos, and on the streets they can be beaten by Slovakian nationalists and no one to be blamed. In Macedonia, such thing can never happen. Even the derogatory name Gypsies is used less and less in Macedonia, giving way to the word “Romas”, explained Friedman during his stay in Skopje.
Eben Friedman, who works at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany, deals with the Roma problems, mainly in Macedonia and the other countries of post-communist Eastern Europe.
Marija Kuka |
