Roma meet in Brno to find ways of escaping isolation
To find ways of escaping isolation, representatives of Central Europe's Roma communities met in the Czech Republic this week to exchange ideas and experiences. The two-day conference, which was held in the Moravian capital Brno, was part of a four-year programme in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, aimed at increasing Roma integration and participation in all levels of civil society, such as access to health, justice, education, and business opportunities.
Brad Heckman, is the regional director for Partners for Democratic Change, an international non-profit organisation that focuses on conflict resolution, and one of the organisations involved in the four-year programme:
"We had a strong desire to see what would happen if we would bring together the local change agents in the communities across borders to learn from one another. The people we are working with at the community level are just regular folks. They are teachers, social workers, labourers, entrepreneurs; they are Roma folks who are doing their part to make a difference. As much great work as they are doing, they are very often doing this in isolation. Many of them have not visited neighbouring villages, let alone other countries. So, we wanted to bring some of the people together, who have been most active in our programme in our nine target communities in the three countries, and give them the opportunity to share their stories and their experiences, to learn from one another and to hopefully build long-term relations across communities and across borders."
It's been fifteen years since the fall of communism and we're still solving the question of how to integrate the Roma into the rest of society. What's the problem? Why is it taking so long?
"Well, I think one of the challenges is to overcome the understandable cynicism that we all feel, having spent the last fifteen years waiting for something to happen on the integration front. On the positive side, for the first time since the fall of communism, the prime ministers of each of the countries we are working in, as well as other countries throughout the region, have publicly declared that they are committed to Roma integration - they are on record as saying that - and they are committed to putting together action plans for dealing with all of these issues. A pre-condition for joining the EU for all of these countries was to demonstrate due diligence towards integration and towards anti-discrimination. So, it seems like we're headed in the right direction and I would like to believe that our programme is part of the critical mass of attention to these kinds of issues. I think one of the challenges will be taking some of these ideas that exist on the policy level and national government level and making sure that they are vibrant and real locally. So, it involves transforming an ambitious document on multi-culturalism and on integration and giving it real life in the communities. What I'm hoping is that what we're doing through our programmes, through the conciliation commissions, the co-operative planning, our school programmes, and so on, is a way of breathing life into some of these public policies and making some of these declarations by the governments come to fruition."
You work with the Roma in the Czech Republic but also in Slovakia and in Hungary. In what country are the Roma integrated the most?
"Very often, it depends on the community but it seems to me that Hungary probably has the highest number of integrated Roma in its population. That's partially due to some specific structures that have been set up in Hungary, in which Roma have something called minority self-governments, which allow them to interface with the majority population and give them a voice.
"But there are communities throughout all three countries where there are examples of Roma integrating at all levels of society. Unfortunately, there are also examples of Roma living in completely separate conditions in settlements outside the city with very little access to medical care or normal schools or justice, or any of these things. So, while some communities are better than others, it's definitely a challenge across the board in all these three countries and, frankly, throughout Europe."
