Category Archives: Serbia

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Maja Jovanović

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Maja Jovanović is a poet and ambassador of Roma culture and literature: “I find inspiration in children”

She says that it sometimes is very difficult to bare your soul through a song. Sometimes it’s easy to write a poem, but it’s a shame if it doesn’t get into the hands of readers, especially the youngest generations.

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Serbia and Roma

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The event “Roma to your city” was held for the first time in 2011. “This is the eleventh presentation of Romani culture in front of the people of Piroć in this way,” says Silvija Nešić from UG “Ternipe” and adds that the event represents a platform for the promotion and respect of Romani culture, gathering talented young Romani men and women. “Over the years, the conditions for the promotion and development of Roma culture have been created, and soon, with this goal, a Roma cultural centre will be opened in Pirot,” says Nešićeva.

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Serbia: The Opovo Settlement

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The new settlement in Opovo is one of the more organized of the Vojvodina region, having been built in 2019 by a European Union project with the aim of integrating the Roma population into the local community. It was visited by representatives of the National Council of the Roma National Minority and the province on the occasion of the “Children’s Games”.

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Serbia and Romnja

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According to research by domestic and international organizations, the biggest problems Roma women face are insufficient education, gender equality and frequent discrimination in the family and society. These difficulties, which the Roma people have been facing for decades, can only be solved by the association and joint action of young, educated and charismatic women – said Živana Živanović, expert associate of the provincial secretariat for education and member of the municipal council in charge of social policy, youth and sports in the municipality of Sremski Karlovci.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Palić European Film Festival

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The film festival in Palić, Serbia, amongst others will feature the movie “Three thousand numbered parts” by Adam Časi. The movie is based on a theatre play, directed by Časi, staged in Budapest and then moved to Berlin. Supported by the Open Society Foundation, the creative team composed exclusively of Roma has been working together for the sixth year in the desire to educate marginalized Roma through artistic activity. Roma boys and girls act, sing, dance, satirically referring to their own painful life stories, continuous traumas and experiences that left scars on their hands. Cruel, seasoned with dark humour, a political film against injustice, prejudice, discrimination and racism towards the Roma – the largest European minority.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia: Journalist and Rom

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Zoran Saitović, editor-in-chief of the ROMinfomedia portal from Leskovac, Serbia, spoke about the difficulties he faces in his career as a journalist, but also as an activist in the fight for minorities and human rights in nowadays Serbia.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia – Horrible

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The story of an unqualified teaching assistant is accused of having sexually harassed more than 20 children in a kindergarten with mostly Roma. In another kindergarten, an assistant molested more than 50 children in the same Vojvodina region.

Bad.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia: Journalism Workshop

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The first workshop organized by the Ecumenical Humanitarian Organization (EHO) on the topic “Journalists in the world of discrimination and anti-Gypsyism” was held on June 29 and 30 in Novi Sad at the premises of EHO. The project is supported by the Swiss organization HEKS/EPER, and is implemented by the Ecumenical Humanitarian Organization Novi Sad in partnership with 7 municipalities in Serbia.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia and Statistics

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The Serbian language is the mother tongue of 84.4 percent of the population of Serbia according to the latest numbers published by the Serbian Republic Institute of Statistics.

After Serbian, the most represented mother tongues are Hungarian, 2.6 percent, Bosnian, 2.2 percent, Romani, 1.2 percent, and Albanian, 1.0 percent.

We can only guess that many Roma simply wrote their mother tongue is Serbian (or Hungarian).

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Osman Balić

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Osman Balić, director of the YUROM centre and president of the Standing Conference of Roma citizens’ associations SKRUG Lliga Roma (Serbia), is speaking about interculturalism as a phenomenon in which we all live together. He tells about the importance for young Roma to preserve their traditions and language.

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Serbia and Racism

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An article about a young Romni who is graduating from high school and who could not find anyone willing to go with her to the prom. It turns out she was the victim of constant abuse in her class, with people referring to her origins and making disparaging comments such as being given a piece of copper with the words, “Your people are definitely collecting copper, so let’s contribute”.

Several famous people have proposed going with her to the prom ball.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia: Mentors

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The Roma organisation called “Romani asvin” from Kruševac launched a peer mentoring program. Until the end of August, a program called “Mentors on a click” is available to all Roma students at universities. Since the beginning of May, about twenty people interested in getting mentors have contacted us electronically – says Alma Kajtazi from the Association, explaining the advantages of the website www.romaniasvin.org on the Edu info-roma platform.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Ljiljjana Petrović Butler

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The story of a Serbian Romani singer, Ljiljjana Petrović Butler, born in 2944 in Belgrade, who died in 2010 in the Netherlands, having fled the wars in Yugoslavia.

Unfortunately, this story also reinforces many stereotypes: early marriage and children, no education, dirty, and so on. Sad, as it could have been told differently.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia, Roma, and Rap

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The Gypsy Roma Urban Balcan Beat (GRUBB) is a show in Serbia created by young Roma artists. Here, in the article, a young Rom participated for two years and wants to continue. A reportage on Serbian television that will be shown on April 26th.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Vojvodina TV

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“Paleta” is a program of the Radio-television Vojvodina.It is a selection from the content prepared by the television editorial offices in the languages of the national communities, thus also in Romanes. In order to get closer to each other, “Paleta” is broadcast in the languages of the national communities, with a Serbian translation.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Child Marriages

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Serbia is working on an initiative to amend family law to define and recognize child marriage as a form of human trafficking, as 22-50% of Serbian Romane girls are married before the age of 18 years old.

A recent UNICEF report revealed that more than half of girls from Roma settlements in Serbia and 22% of girls from low-income families marry before the age of 18. Even more worryingly, 16% of Roma girls marry before the age of 15 and 5% give birth at this age.

As usual, take these percentages with a pinch of salt. These usually refer to the Roma that are recorded as such, not to all Roma.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia and Higher Education

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Roma high school students visited the Faculty of Law. The Faculty of Law of the University of Niš has signed an agreement on cooperation with the Roma Education Foundation to ensure the greatest degree of inclusivity in education.

Let’s see if this works out …

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