The eighth of April, the International Roma Day, is an opportunity to remind the public every year about an extremely difficult position of the Roma in Serbia and that the authorities express declarative support and understanding to improve their position in Serbia.

However, it is also an opportunity to point out once again that it is necessary to urgently change the practice that brings us to the fact that each year on the occasion of marking the International Roma Day, people talk about the same problems faced by the Roma community and to listen to the announcement of solving their problems again and again. Roma face unequal treatment on a daily basis and also problems in exercising their rights and social exclusion, and the Republic of Serbia does little to improve their situation and eliminate systemic obstacles to improving of their situation.

Last year we wanted to point out at three problems that threaten the lives, violate the guaranteed dignity and hinder the integration of the entire Roma community. These problems are violence against Roma men and women, living conditions and forced evictions of Roma settlements and problems of legally invisible persons. This year, we can only repeat that, in addition to many others, these problems still remain unresolved and that, except in a small part, we do not see that declarative support follows the real results aimed at improving the position of the Roma.

Hate speech and violence against the Roma community has not been reduced, while impunity or mild punishment for these offenses have not been stopped. In addition, it has been noted that some media put ethnic labels on perpetrators of criminal acts and used open hate speech against Roma, which produces anti-Roma sentiment and violence against the Roma community.

The exercise of the right to adequate housing boils down to random conducting of forced evictions of informal settlements, without any plan for the improvement of living conditions in Roma settlements and with the lack of respect for international human rights standards. Only in the second half of 2011, seven Roma settlements were evicted without any plan and based on already seen model which completely ignores the standards of adequate housing. In addition, the eviction of one more informal Roma settlement – Belvil has been announced.

Legally invisible persons cannot exercise their basic human rights this year either. They still cannot be cured, employed, registered as parents of their children, included in social welfare system or exercise other rights that are available to all other citizens of Serbia. The law that would largely solve systemic problems in exercising the right to be recognized as a person before the law is the National Assembly, but its possible adoption, with all declarative support of the state authorities, will have to wait for the new convocation of the National Assembly.

Many international organizations – treaty bodies of the United Nations, European Commission and bodies of the Council of Europe have drawn attention to the problems we were drawing to last year and we are still drawing to. However, despite all recommendations and assurances that the Republic of Serbia is genuinely committed to the respect of human rights of all citizens and improvement of the position of the Roma, the results in this and many other areas important for the improvement of the Roma position have been persistently missing.

We demand that the state take all necessary measures and without any further delay solve these problems to which human rights organizations permanently point. Declarative commitment, verbal support and vague promises of the state are not an expression of willingness to solve the problems, but to conceal and postpone their solution. We demand that the state take concrete actions and ensure measurable results of the mutual effort to improve the situation of Roma.

Coalition against Discrimination consists of: Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Civil Rights Defenders, Labris - Lesbian Human Right Organization, Anti-Trafficking Centre, Network of Committees for Human Rights in Serbia (CHRIS Network), Association of Students with Disabilities, Gayten- LGBT, Praxis and Regional Center for Minorities.