ROMA ADVOCACY HANDBOOK
Chachipen national coalitions of Roma civil society
Previous research, advocacy and awareness-raising activities have shown that ‘truth’ is an essential condition for seeking justice. Understanding the mechanisms behind past and ongoing institutional forms of antigypsyism such as spatial segregation, school segregation and forced evictions can help to recognise and avoid such traps in the future, and to promote EU fundamental values – dignity, liberty and equality.
Roma have been survivors of hundreds of years of systemic and extensive dehumanisation, which have been made legal through royal decrees, state laws and church rules. They have been victims of slavery, persecution, the Holocaust, forced sterilisation, forced placement into state care, educational segregation, to mention but a few age-old atrocities. This long-term dehumanisation has poisoned our societies, and gave life to antigypsyism, the belief that Roma are inferior, that they are capable of less, and that they do not want to be good citizens of the countries in which they live.
The effects of antigypsyism have been institutionalised. This manifests in governments’ decisions not to spend their structural and investment funds on the improvement of the life chances of Roma. They can be detected in the public messages of politicians using Roma as scapegoats to gain votes. All these decisions – either taken deliberately or due to lack of knowledge – have created a complete and mutual mistrust between the Roma and the non-Roma, which is very difficult to overcome.
The CHACHIPEN project further builds on research, capacity/advocacy and awareness raising activities to advance truth, recognition and reconciliation processes. It aims to combines state of the art knowledge on the injustices suffered by Roma throughout history, while mobilising Roma communities around the knowledge created through sustained capacity building on advocacy among the Roma activists and NGOs at national and EU levels as well as targeted awareness-raising activities for the recognition of antigypsyism and the need and potential of truth and reconciliation processes at national and at the EU level.
In this context, the project proposes the Advocacy handbook for national Roma organisations and civil society coalitions on useful tools to fight antigypsyism and engage in advocacy activities around truth and reconciliation process, including anti-racism advocacy strategies, aware¬ness-raising, monitoring and data collection, coalition-building and building wider alliances.
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