The Commissioner for the protection of Equality and the National Minority Centre held closing conference and presented the results of the project ”Overcome the inequality: Combat against discrimination and hate against Roma in Serbia”, financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The project goals were building capacities and improvement of the position of Roma activists and representatives of the local communities in order to be actively involved in combat against discrimination of the Roma people. The additional goal was encouragement of Roma persons to effectively use the mechanisms for the protection of equality and combat against discrimination.

Coordinator of the Regional Minority Centre, Jovana Vukovic said that Roma activists don’t recognize the discrimination acts as such, and that education of the Roma people in this segment is still needed. Program Advisor in Regional Minority Centar, Marko Vasiljevic stated that physical attacks motivated by the hatred towards Roma people are still underreported due to lack of information and lack of the adequate reaction of the relevant authorities.

The largest number of the complaints received in the Commissioner’s is based on the discrimination against Roma citizens. The discrimination is the most frequent in the areas of employment and education.

This project was the continuation of very successful cooperation between the Regional Minority Center and the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality. This cooperation gave many concrete results in the area of the protection of Roma citizens though improvement of their life in Serbia.