Countries join forces to aid Roma

Countries join forces to aid Roma
Ian Traynor, Central Europe correspondentThursday February 3, 2005
GuardianGovernments in the Balkans and central Europe agreed yesterday on the first concerted policies to tackle decades of discrimination against Europe's most marginalised and persecuted people, the Roma.
Meeting in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, leaders and officials from eight countries, from Bulgaria to the Czech Republic, adopted a common declaration, pledging public funds to a 10-year programme of integration of the Roma, or Gypsy, population, which numbers about 6 million in the countries concerned.
"This is one of the great moral issues facing Europe today," said James Wolfensohn, the outgoing president of the World Bank, which is sponsoring the "Decade of Inclusion" programme, together with the US-Hungarian philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society foundations.
"In the next couple of decades the fate of the Roma minority will be the most important, most complicated, and most comprehensive social challenge we are facing," he added.
Mr Soros's organisations are putting up $30m (£16m) for education projects, and yesterday's meeting obtained pledges of $13m in addition to the funds earmarked by the governments concerned.
"This is the most outstanding neglected issue in Europe of a minority being excluded," Mr Soros told the Guardian.
"But it's not popular for a democratically elected government to spend a lot of resources on Roma.
"There is a very strong anti-Roma sentiment in these countries, and that's reflected in the politicians."
Some Roma activists were unsure about the governments' initiative.
"After centuries of neglect and discrimination, 10 years is a rather short period to expect some real progress," said Asen Slavchev of the Roma-Lom Foundation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,1404363,00.html
http://news.amnesty.org/mavp/news.nsf/print/ENGEUR010012005