Citizenship Offers Hope for Macedonia’s Roma
For years, USAID has worked to help Macedonia’s Roma community claim basic rights—including the right to legal employment or unemployment registration, basic free health care, social welfare, and access to public education—through citizenship.
Roma communities throughout Macedonia and Eastern Europe are hindered by poverty, illiteracy, and statelessness. When the Macedonian government adopted a temporary amendment to its 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 non-governmental organizations (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 paved the way for the registration of her five children, which is currently underway.
Citizenship is the first, but crucial, step in the integration of the Roma people into Macedonian society. Aside from providing rights, it provides a new degree of human dignity to members of this severely marginalized minority. As new citizens emerge from Macedonia's Roma communities, there is a renewed hope for a brighter future for the Roma people and their children.
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Milena Nitraj with members of the nongovernmental organization ARKA
Photo credit: ARKA NGO |
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