In September and October 2016, Praxis held three two-day workshops for Roma women and men in Leksovac, Kostolac and Novi Pazar, aimed at prevention and elimination of child, early and forced marriages. The workshops were organized as part of the activities on the project “Legal Assistance to Persons at Risk of Statelessness in Serbia”, funded by UNHCR. 

The workshops followed the activities initiated in 2015 in Novi Pazar and continued in Leskovac and Kostolac in April 2016. A total of 75 women and girls and 75 men and boys took part in the workshops. Due to the specific gender role of women in the Roma community, the workshops were organized in a way that first day of the workshop targeted women and the second men. 

The goal of the workshops was to come up with the proposal of mechanisms that would lead to prevention and elimination of this harmful traditional practice, during a two-day interactive discussion about the importance of the healthy early child development, respect for children’s needs and wishes, necessity of regular health protection, sexual and reproductive health, the importance of timely and continuous education. The issues identified as leading causes of child, early and forced marriages were, as in the first round of workshops, poverty, low educational status of Roma families living in Roma settlements, the high unemployment rate of the Roma and patriarchal cultural tradition. In addition, it turned out that the lack of support for Roma children in the education system through monthly bus tickets, free textbooks and scholarships for secondary school students, is one of the possible causes of child, early and forced marriages.

The average age of marriage among the present Roma women was 16-17, and 18-19 among the Roma men. Also, the minimum age of marriage among the Roma women ranges from 13-15, the age when 21 present Roma women got married (28%). Only 22 participants (29.3%) entered into marriage /common marriage after 18 years of age, i.e. after the marriageable age.

“You are a child, and then you are a woman. You are never a young girl.” 

“I got pregnant when I was 15 and I hardly survived.”

“Some girls are married by their parents, when they find them rich husband.”

“Tradition. If she fails to get married until she is 15, she is not a girl any more, she is old. Culture now comes from a family. I lost one daughter when she was 14, she got married as young as I had been. Then I kept the younger daughter until she was 17, and then she knew how to think .”

“Virginity must be saved before a marriage. That’s how a girl did her mother proud.”

“I was ashamed when my daughter got married at 13, I hid so that nobody could congratulate me on the son-in-law.”

“We make mistakes as well. It’s a great blow when your daughter runs away and gets married at 13. To go there, or not to go? You go and see, and poverty makes you leave your child there. It’s shame to return the child. It’s a big mistake!” 

In order to help the participants to consider the problem of child, early and forced marriages from different aspects, the video clips Avoid My Destiny and I’m a Roma Woman were played. The former, which is about testimonies of Roma women who are victims of forced marriages and domestic violence, left a strong impression on the participants, who generally sympathized with the fates of Roma women from the video clip, and denied the presence of such practices in their communities. The latter, with its affirmative concept inspired the participants and directed them once again to perceive education as a path to better future for all girls and boys.

“This is a true story. When poor, people accept this and that, they throw money on the table. Its’ a tradition.”

“Money is given so that a father can escort his daughter properly. A half is given to the daughter and the son-in law, and a half is spent on the wedding party.”

"This is beautiful. You see a woman who has a goal and she did it." 

The impression is that the participants see the workshop as very useful, as support to the Roma community in terms of identifying their problems and expressing the will and readiness to address them. It is necessary to continue working with Roma communities in these municipalities, provide them with advisory support and empower them to talk about this problem openly and work to resolve it. Educational and advisory work with parents, as decision makers, is equally important as the work with children aimed at raising awareness and empowering the girls and boys aged 10 to 15 years to resist this harmful traditional practice.

Workshop activities in these municipalities are followed by community meetings with representatives of institutions responsible to act in the case of child, early and forced marriages. Information obtained at workshops and community meetings, together with an analysis of regulations and case studies, will be translated into recommendations and proposals of public policies for addressing the problem of child, early and forced marriages, which Praxis will present in December 2016.

See also:

Praxis Held Workshops on Prevention and Elimination of Child, Early and Forced Marriages

Retrieved from Info 24 portal for our region

The panel discussion entitled ”Let’s stop statelessness among children in Europe“ has been organised today by the Youth Office, City Municipality Palilula in the Cultural Centre Palilula.

 ”We have organised an info-day about statelessness to inform you about the problems encountered by stateless people in Serbia and in the world and the related consequences. In addition to the lecture, we have prepared visually attractive postcards and a video created by the European Network on Statelessness, which also launched the campaign No Child Should be Stateless. This campaign calls on all the European countries to regulate their laws to finally solve the problem of statelessness“, said Ambassador Ivana Radojković at the panel discussion.

Who are stateless persons?

A stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. The problem of statelessness in Serbia mostly affects the members of Roma community. Those who are not registered in birth registry books have remained also without citizenship. Other groups of people are in a similar position: those whose fact of citizenship is not registered into registry books despite the existing basis for acquiring citizenship, those who were registered in destroyed or missing registry books and those who remained without citizenship or acquired citizenship of the country in which they do not live due to the breakup of the SFRY. All these persons are at risk of statelessness, and there are many children among them.

”One of our basic programmes is education for youth about different topics and areas of social life. The Municipality of Palilula has many refugees and displaced people settled in its territory. We have recognised the need for their integration into society and therefore we inform and educate young people about this topic. There is a large number of young people, students from the secondary school in Palilula, and YO volunteers“, stated YO Coordinator, Aleksandra Saša Petrović. 

What is citizenship?

Citizenship is a legally recognised link between individuals and a state. Based on such legally recognised link and status of a citizen, an individual acquires the rights guaranteed by the legal system of his or her state, but also assumes certain obligations. Living without citizenship is associated with a number of difficulties. The unresolved status of citizenship inevitably entails the inability to access all rights conditioned by citizenship. It means that you cannot finish school, that you do not have social assistance, that your health care is limited, etc., as explained at the panel discussion.

Therefore, in order to prevent statelessness among children, it is necessary to ensure that every child is registered immediately at birth irrespective of the status of parents.

Civil society organizations demand the passing of the Free Legal Aid Act and the respect for minimum standards found in contemporary legal regulation in this field.

The Republic of Serbia is the only country in Europe which has not adopted a law on free legal aid. Even though such a law has been directly designated as one of the first steps in further advancement towards integration into the European Union,  the Republic of Serbia's Government and National Assembly have for ten years now lacked the political capacity to execute the explicit constitutional obligation and pass the law.

A contemporary free legal aid act has to be able to prevent the possibility of establishing a monopoly in this field and therefore to secure an equal legal position for all service providers, which is not the case with the existing draft law. In view of the fact that the beneficiaries of free legal assistance (poor citizens and victims of violence, trafficking, discrimination and so forth) must be guaranteed respect for their specific needs and positions, and must not become hostages to other persons’ desire to get rich, civil society organizations are calling for the responsible ministries, Government and members of the National Assembly to complete the procedure of adopting the law on free legal aid without delay.

Civil society organizations demand that this law be founded on standards which will meet the needs of a widest circle of beneficiaries of free legal assistance, and particularly the following standards:

1. Advocacy and local self-governments are obliged, according to the Constitution, to provide legal assistance (Article 67 of the Constitution), which does not limit the freedom of other service providers to provide free legal aid to citizens.
   
   
2. The Free Legal Aid Act has to enable the provision of free legal aid by the widest circle of service providers, particularly associations of citizens, legal clinics, unions and professional associations. The position of all providers of free legal aid has to be regulated by a single law.
    
3. All providers of free legal aid have to be placed in an equal legal position regarding registration procedures, obligations with regard to respect for professional standards, quality and accessibility of services and financing.
   
   
4. The Act has to allow cooperation between providers of free legal assistance, their associations for the purpose of a common provision of free legal aid, and the creation of a joint legal aid service.
   
   
5. The Act has to respect the specific needs and positions of the beneficiaries of free legal aid. The Act has to provide guarantees to the beneficiaries that they would have the right to choose the provider of free legal aid, who would perform all the necessary legal actions in a particular case.

ASTRA
Autonomous Women's Center Center for Advanced Legal Studies
Civil Rights Defenders
Network of Committees for Human Rights - CHRIS
Humanitarian Law Center
Youth Initiative for Human Rights
Praxis

Download the Demands with the list of CSOs and networks which supported Demands here. 

Praxis released Protection Monitoring Report for the period from 16 September to 15 October 2016.

The number of refugees and migrants present daily in the parks near the Belgrade Bus Station rose to nearly 1,300 persons at the end of the reporting period, compared to around 600 in mid-September. Almost all asylum and reception centres are full, including AC Krnjaca, while there were around 1,000 refugees and migrants sleeping rough in Belgrade at the end of the reporting period, compared to around 300 in mid-September. Hygienic conditions in the old barracks, abandoned buildings and other facilities where refugees sleep are alarming, with increased number of scabies and body lice infestation. Furthermore, there is evident lack of winter NFIs in the field (jackets, shoes, blankets, etc), especially for men. 

Praxis continued protection monitoring in the field, provided information to refugees and migrants in Belgrade about available legal options and available services, identified vulnerable cases assisted them or referred them to other organizations for targeted assistance. Praxis also provided protection by presence and accompanied refugees to PS Savska for registration. Inconsistencies in registration continued, access to asylum is often hindered, protection of unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) is still the most challenging, while refugees continue to report mistreatment by both the authorities and civilians along the route.

Download the Report HERE.

The problems faced by the tenants of social housing apartments in the settlement “Beranovac” in Kraljevo, built to meet the housing needs of internally displaced persons with the donation of the organisation HELP - Hilfe Zur Selbsthilfe e.V. – Mission in the Republic of Serbia, are still far from being solved.

In fact, after the expiry of the three-year period in which the internally displaced persons, previously the residents of collective centres, lived in the social housing apartments in Kraljevo free of charge, the Municipal Housing Agency (MHA) prescribed that the users of social housing apartments should pay a minimum of EUR 75 in dinar equivalent per household member. In addition, the agreements offered to the tenants by the MHA envisaged the monthly rental in the amount of EUR 1.20 per square metre. Having in mind that a certain number of tenants do not earn any income or are pensioners, beneficiaries of social allowance or temporary assistance for unemployed persons from Kosovo, the fulfillment of contractual obligations was impossible for many of them. By rejecting to sign the unfavourable agreements, the tenants of social housing apartments lost the legal basis of housing and were sued in 2013 by the MHA. The lawsuits were filed against 33 internally displaced families, and court procedures are far from completion. 

In the meantime, the sued residents addressed many public authorities with a plea to solve the current situation by considering the actual circumstances and particularly the social needs of internally displaced persons who live in the disputed apartments. Neither the state nor the City of Kraljevo, in the capacity of the user of the apartments in question, had an interest to consider the problem in the wider context of protection of the rights of internally displaced persons, which is the reason why their only action was to conduct lengthy civil proceedings. 

In such circumstances, the tenants of social housing apartments have been living for three years in uncertainty and in constant fear of eviction. In addition, they are forced to face daily with numerous obstacles in accessing their rights, caused by the fact that they cannot extend their residence at the addresses where they actually reside.

The sixth regional WeBLAN conference took place in Zagreb in the period 12-14 October 2016. It was attended by representatives of non-governmental organisations Vaša prava BiH, Praxis from Serbia, Civil Rights Program Kosovo, the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association from Macedonia, the Legal Center from Montenegro and the Information Legal Centre from Croatia. The participants had the opportunity to present the achievements and challenges in the field of human rights, exchange experiences and discuss possibilities for further capacity building of WeBLAN. In addition, the participants expressed concern about the pending problems of statelessness and in this regard called on the states in the region to take measures to prevent statelessness, taking into account the following recommendations:

• Introduce a special statelessness determination procedure in Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and improve that procedure in B&H;
• Ensure the registration of children in birth registry books immediately after birth regardless of the status of their parents;
• Prevent statelessness among children;
• Strengthen the regional cooperation of states with the aim of obtaining personal documents, registration in civil registry books and prevention of statelessness;
• Ensure mutual recognition of public documents;
• Intensify efforts to raise awareness of target groups on the importance of possessing personal documents.

WeBLAN operates as an informal network of civil society organisations dedicated to the protection, promotion and advancement of human rights and social inclusion, the prevention and reduction of statelessness in the Western Balkans and the fight against discrimination.

More about the founding of WeBLAN can be read here.