Today marks 365 days – one year – since the full-scale war that Russia started against Ukraine.
A year ago today ERGO Network strongly condemned this war. We expressed our full solidarity and our support to Ukraine, and in particular to our member organisation in Ukraine – Roma Women Fund “Chiricli”.
With the help of our Ukrainian colleagues, we advocated and fundraised for the Roma people who stayed in Ukraine and faced danger, displacement, and economic and physical hardships. Through our networks in Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary we supported the arriving Ukrainian Roma refugees and did our best to make their forced move easier.
Through our network and our members, we were fortunate to be able to contribute to the fight for freedom, democracy and human rights. We were even more fortunate to be able to support the Roma people.
Throughout this year we have seen that the war did not eradicate antigypsyism. If anything, it worsened the already hard situation of many Ukrainian Roma both in Ukraine and in Europe.
Today, one year later, we stand strong in our commitment to work and support our people as long as it takes for Ukraine to win the war. We will also continue to fight antigypsyism, which is never justified: neither in the peacetimes nor during the war.
In his speech today, marking the one year since the beginning of the war, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said:
“We became one family. We no longer have strangers here. Ukrainians today are all our own. Ukrainians hosted Ukrainians, opened their homes and their hearts for those who needed to flee the war.”
We want to believe that those many Roma soldiers on the frontlines defending their country, those Roma men and women protecting their cities and villages, doing their part in helping their communities and their neighbours, those Roma mothers who had to flee the country to save their children – the future of Ukraine and every Ukrainian Roma citizen making the small but significant daily steps to advance the victory; We want to believe that these Ukrainians will be recognised as a part of the big family, and their contribution in the victory remembered and cherished.