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AN OVERVIEW OF GENERAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION IN SERBIA
since May 2007. In cooperation with other organizations, the Office carries out a program
for scholarships for Roma secondary school pupils in Vojvodina. During the first 100 days,
156 Roma secondary school pupils and 27 Roma students who attended schools in the
territory of Vojvodina were given scholarships 168 . Support to education of Roma pupils has
been successfully continued over the following years.
§ 108. The citizens of Serbia lack the awareness of the problem of Roma exclusion and
think that Roma children are not sufficiently included in the education system because
of poverty (30%) and tasks imposed by their parents (34%), while Roma parents are
not willing to cooperate with educational institutions regarding their children (33%);
40% of respondents think that only a few Roma are willing to fully cooperate, while
20% believe that such cooperation is reduced to the initiative by educational and other
state institutions 169 .
§ 109. In Roma community, the most vulnerable and the most excluded are those who
live in Roma settlements and displaced persons from Kosovo and Metohija. Additional
problem for these people and considerable obstacle for the realization of their rights
is the fact that they are often not entered into birth registries or citizenship registries,
for which reason they cannot obtain personal documents. Other members of Roma
community too suffer systemic discrimination in the realization of their basic human
rights (to social welfare, employment and education), since these rights may be enjoyed
only by persons with registered permanent residence, which they cannot obtain because
of living in illegal settlements. 170 In 2009 and 2010, Roma people were exposed to
forced evictions, most often from the so-called “unhygienic” settlements in Belgrade,
which were organized in a very inhumane way, often without giving the residents the
possibility to collect their movables first and without working out solutions for the next
steps. To make the city prettier for tourists and athletes who were coming to the 2009
Summer Universiade, city authorities knocked down Roma settlements in the vicinity
of the University village before safe, appropriate and sustainable accommodation had
been found for the residents. In the end, they had to move away because they had no
choice; it could be read later in the media that they complain that the City failed to fulfill
what had been agreed when they agreed to move out, and that the location of their
new settlements is inappropriate for their work (they mostly collect waste), so that now
they are not capable of supporting their families. How non-Roma inhabitants of Belgrade
perceive their Roma neighbors could be illustrated by the protests that regularly occur in
the Belgrade suburbs where the authorities announce the building of Roma settlements.
Moreover, these forced evictions constituted violation of the right to free movement and
settlement, since persons who did not have registered residence in Belgrade had to move
168
www.b92.net, 24 September 2007.
169
Survey carried out by “Prosvetni pregled” and information agency “Ipres”, Vreme no. 876, 18 October 2007.
170
Minority Rights Center http://www.mrc.org.yu/?id_tekst=11&sta=saopstenja
HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA - Report for the period 2000-2010 43