Record shows 23,000 internally displaced Roma from Kosovo
There are approximately 23,000 registered internally displaced Roma from Kosovo living in Serbia, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Wednesday, April 08, 2009
According to the UNHCR data, a significant number of these people have no personal documents - birth certificates and identity cards, and they in not able to exercise their basic rights to health care, education and labour.
According to the 2007 research, organized by the UNHCR and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 26.6% of internally displaced Roma have trouble with accessing basic civic rights due to the lack of personal documents, and recent research of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) indicated that 48.5% of them face that problem.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) shows that five percent of Roma children in Serbia are not registered into birth registries.
Having recognized this problem, the EU has, in scope of the Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization program (CARDS), allocated EUR 1 million for the project intended for registration into birth registries, subsequent registration and legal assistance to domicile Roma population, Roma displaced from Kosovo and Roma returnees from Western Europe.
The mentioned resources are, apart from Serbia, used by Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, as well as Kosovo.
The UNHCR in Serbia, to which around EUR 400,000 were earmarked, initiated a project on May 6, 2008, entitled "Social Inclusion and Access to Human Rights of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians in the Western Balkans" with the plan to cover 20 Serbian municipalities.
