Speaker on the Third International Conference of Roma Women( 24-25 October 2011, Granada,
Spain) on Item VII (Council of Europe)
Female voice, in English.
Thank you madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to present a short declaration
of the Third International Romani Women Conference which was held in Granada last
month. We the Romani women from different corners of the world came together on the
Third International of Romani Women Conference and the first Roma World Congress
held in Granada, Spain to discuss and take action in regards to worrying development
affecting Romani community especially Romani women and children in Europe. We
express our deep concerns regarding the various form of anti-gypsyism with a trend of
growing and spreading across Europe over the past few years. Romani women tend to be
more vulnerable to various forms of violence forced eviction and economic deprivation
there are more and more pushed to the margins of the society, scapegoated, inflicted in
their dignity as persons. Basic rights such as the recognition of the Romani women legal
status and citizenship are being denied or inadequately addressed. What we are
proposing? Practices of early marriages to be stopped because they are leading to deep
poverty further discrimination and exclusion re-enforce such practices. Human rights
situation of our children, women and youth beggars must be addressed with no further
delay. Begging is neither our culture nor our traditional occupation. It is rather the
cultural poverty chronic unemployment discrimination and exclusion. Our
recommendation is that government implement preventive development measures and
refrain from enforcing punitive sanctions because the goal should be to integrate children
and youth into inclusive educational system and their parents into formal labour markets
across Europe. Therefore, the role of the civil society is to push government to uphold
their obligation under international and European treaties and ensure that Romani
women can enjoy their fundamental rights. Romani women show the lack of historic
knowledge so that way governments are responsible for providing the tools and
mechanism for Roma history to be acknowledged and transmitted as a part of their
national history. We acknowledge that the political momentum created at the European
Union level through the endorsement of the EU framework for national Roma integration
and we call for the concerns of Romani women to be effectively mainstreamed through
the priorities highlighted by the EU framework but also address separately as
appropriate. We acknowledge the need of independent Romani women as well. We are
determined to start a political process for Romani women empowerment and we will
really rely on governments international organisations and other relevant stakeholder to
commit and provide mechanism for developing a European Romani women strategy.
Thank you everybody.