#WeRemember

International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 – ERGO Network statement

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as the international commemoration day in memory of the millions of victims of the Holocaust.  On 27 January 1945 the Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, where millions of people were murdered. The Roma children, men and women from the so-called “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau did not live until this liberation day. The last of them, almost 3 000, had been sent to the gas chambers several months prior, on 2 August 1944, as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution to the Gypsy Question”. Sometimes known as the “Forgotten Holocaust,” the Roma Genocide was excluded from the history of World War II for decades after the end of the war.

Every year on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember all victims of the Holocaust and send a warning to today’s world: Let’s not forget that the Holocaust started with words – words that are still around us today.  Gabriela Hrabanova, Director of ERGO Network states: “Antigypsyism has never stopped and even increased during the pandemic. We cannot allow that once again we and other minorities are scapegoated and our humanity is stripped away. Let us all work together to stop the hate and ensure that history will never be repeated”.

PECAO’s workshop materials and media monitoring tool now available

PECAO’s workshop materials and media monitoring tool are available for download

With approximately 12 Million people living in Europe for centuries, the Roma are the continent’s biggest ethnic minority. At the same time they are the its most disliked and discriminated minority, with every third person not wanting to have a Roma neighbour and 80% of Roma living at the risk of poverty.

Antigypsyism – a specific form of racism against people who are perceived as ‘Gypsies’ in the public imagination, is at the core of the social exclusion and discrimination of Roma.

PECAO will counter antigypsyist hate speech online by working with young people, using a combination of peer education and monitoring in order to obtain two-fold results: the peer education methodology will achieve a direct change in attitudes and actions of a high number of young people, and the monitoring will contribute to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.

By using the standard workshop materials created by the consortium and translated in the available languages (EN, BG, CZ, HU, RO and ES), participants of the workshop will be able to understand the phenomena of antigypsyist hate speech and its impact on Roma, as well as the importance to monitor and report that speech online. Furthermore, the participants of the workshop can engage into advocacy and work towards better anti-discrimination policies by addressing antigypsyism as bias motivation, as well as raise awareness among various stakeholders about the antigypsyist hate speech in online media.

The project consortium of PECAO consists of the following partners and funding:

Funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) with co-funding from Google.org:

Funding from the Google.Org Impact Challenge on Safety in the framework of ERGO Network’s project Peer education to counter antigypsyist online hate speech:

The standard workshop materials are available in English, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian and Spanish language for the moment. Should you have any additional requests for session outlines examples, exercises, or need for additional information concerning the topic, please write an e-mail to ERGO network at info@ergonetwork.org by adding the word PECAO to your subject line.

The materials consist of the following documents:

  • M01 – Objectives, Impact and Methodology
  • M02 – Aim and objectives of the workshop
  • M03 – Programme of the workshop
  • M04 – Non-formal education
  • M05 – Protocol form for monitoring media content with hate speech

As well as the media monitoring tool with a glossary available within the tool.

You can access the materials here and media monitoring tool here.

Publicity Disclaimer:

This publication was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme  (REC 2014-2020) and Google.Org Impact Challenge on Safety. The European’s Commission’s and Google.Org’s support for the production does not constitute and endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views of the authors only, and the European Commission and Google.Org cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained there.

Crowdfunding for Grid Detective Game – Autonomia Foundation

Crowdfunding campaign for Detective Game

The Autonomia Foundation and the Detectivity Creative Education and Experience Center have jointly developed the Grid Detective Game – following the successful implementation of other detective games with a similar social purpose. Our own experience and international research prove that the transfer of objective facts is not the most effective in shaping attitudes. It can also be said that many people, when they feel that a program wants to change their thinking or want to pass on some knowledge to them, distance themselves from it and lose interest. However, during detective games, participants are basically busy solving a crime, they are active all the way through – not just involved in knowledge transfer – so as they play, they almost unknowingly acquire knowledge and start thinking about topics they usually avoid. Furthermore, prejudices and stereotypes about the members of a group can be most effectively overwritten by a personal meeting and conversation with the members of the group.

In this game, both the player gaining knowledge and a personal encounter appear, as while participants have to investigate the details of a crime in a disadvantaged village, they can also meet in person with the suspected Roma boy, played by a professional Roma actor for authenticity. During the game, they learn a lot about the situation of the rural Roma in connection with the boy’s story and can identify with the boy step by step during the investigation. After the successful conclusion of the investigation, there will also be a conversation in which young people will be much more active, raising questions and thoughts on Roma integration than they would otherwise after the fresh experience and the excitement of the investigation.

The investigative game has already reached many groups of students and has proven to be successful and effective among the participants. At the same time, there are many classes and schools where such a program would be needed, but financial resources are not available.

Everyone can support the donation campaign to allow 100 young people to take part in the Grid Detective Game and to meet and face issues that redraw their image of disadvantaged Roma. You can support the campaign here.

The games will take place in the first half of 2021.

 

The new EU Roma Strategy and the fight against Antigypsyism in the Western Balkans

The new EU Roma Strategy and the fight against Antigypsyism in the Western Balkans

Despite limitation due to the pandemic of COVID 19, Roma Active Albania kept an active role in advocating for Roma inclusion in the Enlargement countries of the Western Balkans.

Combining distant working with field work, RAA coordinates the  partners of the regional project “Romani Women, Power of Change in the Western Balkans and Turkey”, in following their national plans and providing information from the grassroots  level to ERGO’s study on the impact of COVID 19 on Roma communities.

Thanks to the financial support of the European Union through the European Commission’s DG NEAR, RAA has been working jointly with its partners in the Western Balkans and Turkey to implement the components of the project “Romani Women, Power of Change in the Western Balkans and Turkey”. The last months focused on building synergies in regional advocacy in the context of the new EU Roma Strategy and the fight against antigypsyism.

RAA actively contributed to the organisation of the event “The new EU Roma Strategy and the fight against Antigypsyism in the Western Balkans”, which took place on 4 November 2020 via the Zoom platform.

This virtual conference addressed strategies and measures to combat antigypsyism and to strengthen Roma empowerment and participation in the Western Balkans in the context of the new “EU Roma strategic framework for equality, inclusion and participation” for 2020-2030. The conference brought together governments, international organizations and civil society representatives from all countries in the Western Balkan region.

The new EU Framework guides the commitment of EU Member States and defines the core policy for Roma equality, inclusion and participation in the accession and neighbourhood countries. A key priority of the new framework is to recognize and to fight antigypsyism as the root cause of discrimination and social exclusion. Combatting antigypsyism should be done in a combined approach as a stand-alone task and as cross-cutting issue in the priority areas education, employment, housing and basic services, health and poverty, and keeping a special focus on Roma Women empowerment.

Following this event, RAA participated in and coordinated three national virtual conferences on the same topic, addressing the realities and challenges in Kosovo, Serbia and Albania.

These conferences were organised by Roma Active Albania, ERGO Network and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, in partnership with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement and with support of the European Union and German Federal Foreign Office.

FAGIC events with Roma women

FAGIC events with Roma women

In November FAGIC organised two events focused on Roma women, as 25 November is the International Day to eradicate violence against women.

The first debate “Leisto thaj phanel: rights and dialogue against antigypsyism” revolve around the role of Roma women in the fight against antigypsyism and discrimination. Roma women’s rights risk to be perceived as secondary in general policies addressing antigypsyism, even though the achievement of equal rights for Roma women is crucial in the fight against antigypsyism itself.

You can watch the event in Spanish here.

The second event “Romija thaj gadche vakeripen kotar sastipen: Roma and non-Roma women talking about health” tackled the issue of health rights for women from minority groups, and in particular reproductive rights of Roma women and the importance of creating protocols to ensure no women health rights are violated because of difference in beliefs and culture.

You can watch it in Spanish here.

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Combatting antigypsyism – Page 7 – ERGO Network

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