PROJECT ON ETHNIC RELATIONS

“Mainstream societies need to offer the Roma a real, practical chance to improve their perspectives.”(Manuel Barosso) Yet, despite the growing efforts by governments, international organizations, and civil society, very little has been achieved in terms of improving the housing, education, health and employment perspectives for Roma in Europe, which are the corner stones enabling full participation of the Romani community in society. Continue here

Bucharest, Romania
May 25, 2007

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface 1
Learning to Live Together: The Role of the Media in Covering Interethnic Relations in the Black Sea Region 3
List of participants 20
Other Per Publications 22

PREFACE
In the Black Sea Region, the complexities of ethnic relations are as diverse as the communities that live there. All the countries in the area are multi-ethnic, and all have political borders which do not necessarily reflect their lines of ethnic division. Many of these countries are relatively new democracies still hashing out the mechanisms of free press and transparency. Others are new members to the European Union and NATO. All, however, are still, to different extents, saddled with the remnants of a non-democratic past. What is more, the treatment of minorities in this region garners global attention as too often this is the field on which the international community exercises its power plays.

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LEARNING TO LIVE TOGETHER: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN COVERING INTERETHNIC RELATIONS IN THE BLACK SEA REGION

Preliminary Report

roundtable discussion organized by

The Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) Regional Center for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe,
PER in Princeton, New Jersey, USA
and the
European Parliament’s Intergroup on Traditional National Minorities, Constitutional Regions and Regional Languages

On May 7, 2008, the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) Regional Center for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe in Bucharest, PER in Princeton, New Jersey, USA and the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Traditional National Minorities, Constitutional Regions and Regional Languages organized a roundtable discussion entitled Towards a European Parliament Resolution on National Minorities in the European Union. The roundtable organized in the European Parliament, in Brussels brought together members of the European Parliament, representatives of EU institutions, Member State Governments, intergovernmental organizations and minority policy experts. The discussion was co-chaired by Livia B. Plaks, President of PER and Csaba Tabajdi, Chairman of the EP Intergroup for Traditional National Minorities, Constitutional Regions and Regional Languages. The key-note speakers of the roundtable were Attila Markó, Secretary of State of the Department for Interethnic Relations from Romania and Gabriel N. Toggenburg, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Minority Rights from Bolzano, Italy.
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Winter/Spring 2008 Bulletin

Bucharest, 2007 November 15, Hotel Majestic

The PER Regional Center accepted with pleasure the invitation made by OSCE-ODIHR to participate to the field visit in comunities in which police interventions and conflicts between Roma and police were signaled. (ODIHR Report on field visit)
“Roma and Police – Promoting dialogue, mutual confidence and cooperation” is an important issue, especially taking into account the fact that during the last two years police as well as some of the ethnic communities were involved more often in violent conflicts, phenomenon which we thought was left behind since 1995.
In the period of 1993 -1998, PER had several programs that aimed to improve the relation between police and Roma in Romania, the reports can be accessed at www.per-usa.org and www.per.org.ro. After 1995 PER noticed that police is making significant efforts in order to reform its activity, to handle also the aspects of police – multiethnic communities relations and that this process is ongoing ever since.
During 1993 – 1995 in several Roma communities violent acts occurred. The case analysis reveled that the non-implication of the police led to the escalation of the conflicts and to victims from the Roma communities.
It is somehow a paradox, that in the violent cases between Roma and police during the past two years, the case analyses shows that now some problems related to the intervention method of police, especially what concerns the excessive force use through which civil ethnic Roma persons, who were in fact not the target of the police intervention, ended up as victims of these interventions.

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