On this day, sixty-three years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and proclaimed that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights".  In Serbia, on the International Human Rights Day, this fundamental value of human civilization is still unattainable or almost unattainable for some members of our society.

The Roma community in Serbia is one of the most vulnerable groups that on a daily basis encounter obstacles in accessing the rights that other citizens of Serbia enjoy automatically - they do not have the same opportunities in exercising the rights to citizenship and personal documents, health care and social protection, adequate housing, education or employment.  In addition, the Roma are almost daily exposed to various forms of discrimination, stereotypes and prejudices. There has been a certain progress in terms of overcoming certain obstacles, but the state should fulfil its obligations more decisively and more willingly, and immediately take necessary steps in order to achieve full equality of Roma with other citizens of Serbia.

On this day, in addition to stressing the problem related to the implementation of regulations and urging the state authorities to invest more efforts into improving the situation of the human rights of Roma, we would particularly like to point to the still unresolved problem of "legally invisible" persons - those who are not registered into birth registry books.

Since the right to be recognised as a person before the law is the basic human right that conditions the exercise of all other rights, we would like, on this day, to urge once again the competent state authorities to promptly adopt the regulations that will allow "legally invisible" persons to be registered into birth registry books and enable them to achieve other guaranteed rights, thus giving them the opportunity to live dignified lives.