For years, USAID has worked with Macedonia’s Roma community to claim their basic rights through citizenship. Citizenship allows this highly marginalized minority to access a number of basic rights, including the right to legal employment or unemployment registration, basic free health care, social welfare, and access to public education.
Roma communities throughout Macedonia and Eastern Europe are held back by poverty, illiteracy and statelessness. When the Macedonian government adopted a temporary amendment to the Law on Citizenship in 2004, reducing the naturalization requirements for long-term stateless residents, USAID recognized the need to move quickly. Trainings and information sessions were organized across the country to reach as many potential applicants as possible. Financial assistance was provided to those who could not afford to obtain the necessary documents and pay the application fees. In addition, USAID worked with the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior to streamline procedures, and strengthened the capability of NGOs working on behalf of Roma communities.
More recently, the USAID Civil Society Strengthening Project supported the local NGO ARKA to help Roma citizens to obtain personal documentation. In 2007, ARKA provided more than 370 documents to undocumented Roma citizens. One of the beneficiaries of ARKA’s assistance was Milena Nitraj (pictured above) who was able to obtain a passport at the Embassy of Serbia in Skopje. This has allowed for the registration of her five children, which is currently underway.
Citizenship is only the first step in the integration of the Roma people into Macedonian society, but it is a critical step. Citizenship ensures access to certain basic human rights and brings a new degree of human dignity to members of this severely marginalized minority. As many new citizens emerge from Macedonia's Roma communities, there is a renewed hope for a brighter future for the Roma people and their children. |