On 28 February 2014, a press conference was held on the occasion of the completion of the project “Equal Chances for Better Prospects – Strengthening Roma in Combating Discrimination” implemented by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality in cooperation with non-governmental organizations Praxis and Regional Centre for Minorities and financed by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Serbia.

The results of the project, which was implemented in the period from May 2012 to February 2014, were presented by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality Nevena Petrusic, Praxis’ Deputy Executive Director Jasmina Mikovic and Programme Associate in Regional Centre for Minorities Marko Vasiljevic.

The Commissioner pointed out that the goal of this project was to enhance the visibility of the institution of the Commissioner for Protection of Equality and teach the citizens how to recognize discrimination. In addition, she once again emphasized the importance of reporting discrimination.

Jasmina Mikovic presented the report “Equal Chances for Better Prospects – Strengthening Roma in Combating Discrimination”, which was prepared by Praxis as a result of the need to summarize the experience gained during the implementation of the educational and information campaign on anti-discrimination mechanisms targeting the members of Roma community. On that occasion, she pointed at some of the reasons why many cases of discrimination went unreported by the members of Roma community, such as the lack of understanding of the term discrimination and role of institution of the Commissioner in combating discrimination, fear of victimization and lack of confidence in representatives of public authorities. In addition, she emphasized particularly alarming data of recently published research on the attitude of representatives of public authorities towards discrimination in Serbia, which indicate that a fifth of the representatives of legislative and executive authorities does not know that discrimination is prohibited by the law, and more than a half of the representatives of the public authorities consider that their colleagues expressed discriminatory attitudes or enforced discriminatory behaviour.

Marko Vasiljevic, as one of the participants of panel discussions, transmitted experience gained during the implementation of the campaign with the reference to the methodology and plan of realization of panel discussions.

Finally, it was concluded that project results showed that it was necessary to work of breaking down prejudices of majority population, empowering of the members of Roma community to use anti-discrimination mechanisms, but also that the important role of the representatives of public authorities is in combating discrimination and more responsible media reporting.

Download:
Report “Equal Chances for Better Prospects – Strengthening Roma in Combating Discrimination”
News at Media Centre
News at the website of the Commissioner for Protection of Equality
Video on presenting the report