Concerning 8th April, the International Roma Day, the Council for gender equality of Serbian government and the Office for Human and Minority Rights, in response to Roma Women Network suggestion, have all together organized the conference with the topic of the position of Roma women in the Decade of Roma inclusion. This conference was at the same time the final activity of the campaign the Month of Roma Women Activism which has been performed by organizations and initiatives form the Network since 2010.
During the conference, their contribution to the importance of this topic, apart from the representatives of the Government, Suzana Paunović and Stana Božović, also gave Michael Davenport, Head of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Serbia, Paula Tide, deputy chief of OSCE Mission to Serbia, and Irena Vojáčková-Sollorano, UNDP Resident Representative in Serbia.
The audience was spoken to by Muhedin Fijuljanin, State Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Bajram Saitović, the chief of the Group for the Advancement the Position of Roma People and the Help for Migrants from the Office of human and Minority Rights, Nevena Letić, assistant director of the National Employment Agency and Danijela Barjaktarović, an activist of the Centre for the Protection against Human Trafficking.
The assembly was attended by over 30 members of Roma Women Network from Serbia, as well as the mediators in the health care from the territory of Belgrade, interns form the Office for Human and Minority Rights, representatives of domestic and international organizations, Board for Gender Equality, Ministry of Health, members of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and members of Local Self-Government; in addition, representatives of foundation which support the work of Roma Woman Network: Kvinna till Kvinna,
Fund for an Open Society, Reconstruction Women Fund, Care International, etc.
About the results achieved during the Decade of Roma Inclusion in the Republic of Serbia, from the standpoint of Roma Women Network, spoke Vera Kurtić, n activist of Women Space and Radmila Nešić, an activist of Ternipe Association from Pirot. During her exposition, Vera Kurtić has given general account of the situation in human rights of Roma women before and after the Decade, which showed that the position of Roma women has not been significantly improved and that for the improvement is needed wider and more thorough social action. Radmila Nešić from the Ternipe Association has used this assembly to talk about the difficulties and obstacles in the employment of Roma women, and gave her recommendations for the possible solution of this problem.
After the expositions of the spokespersons, people present were given the word. Activists of Roma Women Network have made several observations and they are the following: representatives of Roma Women Network, as one of the organizers and initiators of the assembly, were given the word only in the second part of the conference when the high representatives had already left the assembly, and that there is an evident lack of Roma women in the decision making positions. Apart from that, in this assembly, activists made an appeal to the future Government to seriously approach the issue of improvement the position of Roma people.
These comments from the activists of Roma Women Network show their rigorousness in finding the solution for the problems Roma people face and their determination to initiate constructive dialogs for finding efficient measures for improving the position of Roma women in the Republic of Serbia after the Decade of Roma people inclusion has passed. Unfortunately, there were no comments from the other people present in this assembly.
Photos from this assembly can be seen in our gallery.