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+RESPECT: Increasing Roma People’s Participation and Citizenship Rights: Campaigns and Tools

Combating Roma discrimination: the European framework

Today, in the context of the global economic crisis, regional and local systems struggle to find resources to invest in inclusion policies, while social cohesion is increasingly threatened by xenophobia. In particular, anti-Roma discrimination persists in many Member States, while the health and socioeconomic conditions experienced by the Roma are generally worse than those of other ethnic minorities.

In recent years, Roma people and other minorities’ inclusion and mainstreaming in local, national and European policies, have been subject of many a debate and action. The “Roma Decade” is one of the examples of how the issue of rights and participation have become central in the international debate. Also, the European Commission staff working document “Community instruments and policies for ROMA inclusion Com(2008) 420” and the Progress Report 2008-2010 of 7 April 2010, underscore the commitment to combat anti-Roma discrimination and racism, providing an overall framework of action and potential instruments available at EU and territorial levels. Notwithstanding these efforts and some improvements in the lives of minorities, many problems persist, the main one being that Roma peoples are victim of racism and their perspectives and rights are not mainstreamed in local policy making.

For this reason, the capacity of local systems to get more data, raise awareness, deliver services (such as access to housing, education, healthcare, employment) and implement measures to tackle poverty, become pivotal in fighting racism, and ensuring social and economic cohesion as well as in leveraging the rights and culture of Roma people as a resource for society at large.

Using an OMC methodology and a transnational approach, +RESPECT focuses on the EU priority of combating racism and xenophobia, with specific actions that are also relevant to the objective of fostering active participation in the democratic life of the Union. Participation in democratic life must critically start from the local/regional level where such dynamics take place daily. This is the reason why +RESPECT deals with the anti-Roma racism issue with a territorial approach.

The innovative nature of +RESPECT consists in its concrete and synergic approach aiming at multi-level governance, where each actor/citizen becomes the agent of change, actively participating in the development of actions. It is a critical competence of territories to tackle anti-ROMA racism and discrimination, access to rights and citizenship. +RESPECT aims at enhancing the knowledge, the intercultural dialogue and the awareness of civil society and practitioners meaningful to the local/regional dimension, but it also aims at contributing to national and European policies and debates.

Challenges addressed by the project

Stakeholders working in the field, and Roma populations living in the cities and regions addressed by the project, are especially affected by a number of needs and constraints thatRESPECT aims at dealing with, namely:

• Insufficient knowledge-base of reliable data on Roma peoples available for more effective anti-discrimination actions and in general, inclusion policies. While the link between discrimination, figures and statistics has been successfully used to combat discrimination based on gender, insufficient common indicators and monitoring tools for Roma and insufficient knowledge of good practices among local authorities (but also at EU level) still hinder the possibility to use reliable monitoring data for the fight against ROMA discrimination, today, even more so, in light of the economic downturn.
• Inadequate services and relations initiated by public officers, low participation of ROMA peoples in democratic processes, and inconsistent coordination. Oftentimes public officers do not have qualification/skills to manage ROMA issues and there is a low or absent ROMA representation and coordination among stakeholders especially at local level, where services and interaction take place.
• A persistent negative general perception (stereotyping) and media communication about ROMA, caused by an inadequate interaction with ROMA resulting in dearth common understanding of universal rights (especially towards the most vulnerable groups, such as women and children), also caused by the inclination of media to focus only on sensationalism (ethical issue) and not on hard facts or comprehensive information with regard to ROMA (professional issue)
• Low educational and/or informative actions fostering intercultural dialogue aiming at specific target of citizens, such as the students, due to scarcity of effective multicultural curricula carried out in schools.

The rationale of the +RESPECT project is that the effectiveness of anti-discrimination policies is particularly bound to the capacity to promote integrated and concerted actions among an heterogeneous set of stakeholders and citizens that act at different levels, with different roles, within different systems.

Objectives

The fundamental strategy of the project is to deal with anti-Roma racism issues with an integrated, holistic and multilevel approach to the problem, in its local and regional dimension, with the following objectives:

• To improve and share a knowledge base of quality-data specific on Roma for the fight against discrimination by means of effective policies
• To improve the capacity of local authorities to relate with and provide services to Roma, to coordinate local stakeholders and to increase participation of Roma in democratic processes
• To decrease the negative public perception of and to improve media ethical communication about Roma increasing interaction opportunities and mutual understanding
• To design and implement educational curricula and information actions fostering intercultural exchanges with specific targets offering public occasions for mutual knowledge, including Romani culture, as part of the local heritage.

The target groups of the project are municipalities and other local civil servants, NGOs working with Roma, Roma representations, students and educators, media professionals. Direct beneficiaries are Roma people living in the involved territories (80.000) and indirect beneficiaries are citizens living in the involved territories and other territories.

Project activities

The project is developed through synergic actions that are in part interrelated in terms of content feeding, and in part will progress in a parallel way towards the different targets of the actions and awareness raising activities.  All in all, the project is divided in three main phases:

1. Inception phase where all assessments, joint development of tools and activities will be prepared for the
2. Main phase where all preparatory work will be tested, used and disseminated and will lead to
3. Final phase, where closure of the project will mainly consist of follow-up activities and sustainability strategies.

Main activities are classified and carried out in the following strands:

• ROMA peoples Observatory – quality knowledge base for anti-ROMA discrimination policies and actions (analysis of data concerning qualitative indicators, analysis and collection of good practices)
• ROMA people participation in civil democracy process (participatory working groups in the municipalities, training sessions for practitioners and officers, “know your law and your rights” information sessions aimed at Roma groups)
• Communication and dissemination, anti-Gipsysm information and awareness campaign (information and awareness campaign in the schools, communicating the Roma life and combating discrimination by Media, multimedia installation European tour)

More details concerning ongoing project activities can be found in the website sections Observatory, Participation and Awareness.