carnival Friday, July 11, amid hope of a better future following days of talks that involved church leaders and prime ministers.
In an unprecedented move, Central and Eastern European government leaders and pastors have agreed to reduce poverty among the region’s estimated six million gypsies, BosNewsLife has learned.
Prime ministers of Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania and ministers from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, and Sweden said they will act to improve the lives of Roma within the next decade.
Millions of Roma will become European Union citizens, when 10 mainly former Soviet satellite states join the organization next year. EU leaders have been concerned about Roma migration to Western countries.
ROMA INCLUSION
The plan, known as the Decade of Roma Inclusion, calls for better education, health care, housing and job opportunities as part of an effort to reduce poverty.
At a parallel Roma Pastoral World Congress, the Catholic church stressed it wants to eliminate discrimination against the Roma "primarily by helping them to reinforce their communal spirit".
Bishop Szilard Keresztes, the president of the Hungarian committee for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples told the Hungarian News Agency MTI that 170 clergy from 25 dioceses of four continents were represented at the congress.
SOROS AGREES
The World Bank and Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros, who organized the government meetings in Budapest, have welcomed the initiatives to improve the lives of Roma.
However in an interview with BosNewsLife, Soros cautioned that governments should also end discrimination of Roma, whom he calls the main victims of Eastern Europe’s post Communist transition and the rise of nationalism.
He specifically condemned Slovakia, where local authorities allowed the forced sterilization of Roma women amid reports that Roma could become the majority within next the 50 to 60 years.
SLOVAKIA EMBARRASSED
"That has to stop," said Soros. "It is an embarrassment for the Slovakian government. I visited Slovakia and I have seen the conditions of the Roma in Slovakia. But I could have done it in other countries too. It is really quite incredible the condition under which some of them live."
Evangelical Christians have described the Roma as a major mission field. A released World Bank study shows that the life span of Roma is up to 20 years less than the majority population due to poverty.
In Hungary for instance, four in 10 Roma are said to live below the poverty threshold of four dollars per day and many Roma children have been banned from secular schools.
Yet not all government leaders agree that social aid is the best way to improve the Roma situation.
BULGARIA DOUBTS
Prime Minister Simeon Saxe Coburg Gotha of Bulgaria, which is among the countries with the largest Roma populations says that job creation is the best way forward. "Social assistance by itself is not really creative," he told BosNewsLife. "It compensates, it helps. Instead, if you create jobs, then people are integrated, motivated and produce even more."
But Roma leaders attending the conference last week, said that is easier said than done. Bulgarian Professor Hristo Kyuchukov, secretary general of the International Romany Union, suggested that attitudes are difficult to change.
"There is a very wrong presumption in the majority opinion that "you see the Roma people like or love this kind of life, to sit at home, to be jobless and wait for $20 per month to get some kind of social security and which are not enough for anything," he said.
DESPERATE SITUATION
"If you have one or two children and your husband or wife is unemployed than the situation is getting extremely stigmatizing and desperate. What are you going to do, you don’t see any exit."
Kyuchukov stressed that some Roma in Bulgaria even die from hunger. However he and other activists said they hope the series of meetings in Budapest has lead to a new understanding of Roma, the most persecuted and impoverished people of Europe.
