19.02.2009.

“Serbia has made a strategy for the inclusion of the Roma, the action plan and budget, in which the assets for the realization of priorities in this year will be multiplied”, pointed Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinator of the Decade Bozidar Djelic at the opening of the 15th session of the International Managing Board of the Decade of Roma in Belgrade. Mladen Bijelic prepares the report.

Since June 25, 2008, Serbia is chairing the Decade of Roma and coordinates the actions of implementing the international initiative to change the position of the Roma in the education, health protection, employment and accommodation from 2005 to 2015. So, the Decade of Roma has started in 2005, on the initiative of the Open Society Fund and the World Bank.

“Our goal is to provide more assets for the financing of all projects relating to the inclusion of the Roma in the system of social trends”, said Djelic, while adding that this organization will ask for the formal inclusion in the realization of European projects for the Roma. He repeated that the priorities of Serbia during its one-year chairing of the decade are the following: education and avoiding the discrimination; accommodation and making of the European policy towards the Roma. Djelic said that in the last five years the percentage of the Roma children included in the obligatory education system has been increased from 65 to 75%, as well as that the education might not be a universal solution, but it still is an important step towards the resolving of other problems that this population is facing.

Minister of Human and Minority rights Svetozar Ciplic has assessed that Europe understands that it is impossible to talks about democracy and socially responsible state unless there is awareness that the Roma are part of that society. “The human, cultural and intellectual resources of the Roma are still insufficiently used in many states”, explained Ciplic, while stating that there are between 10 and 12 million Roma living in Europe and that the knowledge about the necessity to use that potential is the course for the faster development of any society.

More about the significance of education for the Roma population in the process of wider social integration in Serbia was said by Minister of Education Zarko Obradovic, who has presented specific initiatives started in the areas of basic, high-school and higher education, but also regarding the education of the older generations and assistance in the employment of the Roma.

Members of the Decade of Roma are Albania, Croatia, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, while Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain have joined during the Serbian presidency, since its ambassador to Serbia Inigo de Palacio Espana has signed a document on the official joining to that international initiative. This country has been actively working for 20 years on the resolving of many vital issues for the Roma population, such as accommodation, social protection, education and the labor market. “The solution to these problems and rising of the Roma living standard is the prerequisite to their integration in the Spanish social life”, Ambassador Espana stressed after the signing of the membership application for the Decade of Roma.