In the period 25-27 June 2014, Roma Women’s Centre “Bibija” organized a seminar “I know my rights” in Belgrade, as a part of the UNICEF Project “Breaking the Chain of Exclusion of Roma Children through Early Development and Education.” In addition to representatives of the Ombudsperson, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality and Praxis as the moderator, a total of 18 female representatives of 10 Roma non-governmental organizations from Serbia also took part in the seminar.

On the first day of the seminar, Praxis gave an introduction into the theme of human rights. Praxis also created a workshop “My rights in practice” that was held on the third day of the seminar when the participants had the opportunity to recognize, through simulation, the cases of discrimination or violation of rights which are the result of impermissible different treatment and to file a complaint to the relevant independent body accordingly.

Representatives of the Ombudsperson and the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality gave lectures about the registration in registry books, determination of time and place of birth, registration of permanent residence at the address of the social welfare centre, health protection and health insurance, violence against children, safety and education of children, anti-discrimination, situation testing method, protection mechanisms and filing of complaints.
The aim of the seminar was to put emphasis on the exercise and protection of rights of children aimed at improvement of the early childhood development through empowering the representatives of non-governmental organizations to identify problems in their local communities and to motivate the vulnerable to seek protection of their rights.

Preuzmite: Priručnik za pristup pravima

Download the report: Collection of Selected Opinions and Recommendations of the Commissioner for Protection of Equality: Acting upon the Complaints for Discrimination against Children

On 28 February 2014, a press conference was held on the occasion of the end of the project “Equal Chances for Better Prospects – Strengthening Roma in Combating Discrimination”, implemented by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality in cooperation with non-governmental organizations Praxis and Regional Center for Minorities, with the support of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Serbia.

Download: Press Conference “Equal Chances for Better Prospects – Strengthening Roma in Combating Discrimination"

I. D. was born in Germany to the father, who is the citizen of Macedonia, and the mother, who is the citizen of Serbia. After 2000, his family moved to Serbia and in 2005 his father submitted the request for determining I.D.'s citizenship.

The decision of I. D.'s request was not reached not even until May 2014 – nine years after submitting the request. I. D. asked kept asking around in the police station in which the request was submitted, but with no success. Last time, they said to him that he is a foreigner, an adult and that he resides in the country illegally and that therefore he would have to go to Macedonia and register his stay so as to be admitted in the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia.

I. D. then addressed Praxis for assistance. Based on delivered documents, it was concluded that his citizenship had not been determined to him because his parents used the option for I. D. to acquire the citizenship of one parent (i.e. Macedonian citizenship) when registering I.D. in the Embassy of Macedonia whose citizen his father is. At the moment of I. D.’s birth, the rule according to which the parents of different citizenship (of different republics of former SFRY) agreeably decide which citizenship their child will acquire, was then still in force. Therefore, it was not possible to determine the Serbian citizenship for I. D. but he could be just admitted in the citizenship.

Until a few years ago, I. D. as a member of one of the nations from the territory of former SFRY, could have been admitted into the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia just with the statement that the considers Serbia his own country. However, the provisions envisaging such facilitated naturalization were time-limited and stopped being in force. Also, as a minor child of the local citizen (he was only 12 at the moment of submitting the request, and his mother was a Serbian citizen), I. D. could have more easily regulated his stay in Serbia. However, waiting for the decision upon the request, I. D. missed both opportunities.

I. D. and his family are the members of Roma national minority, one of the most vulnerable groups in Serbia. Without possessing enough resources for supporting himself, I. D. cannot obtain the permanent resident status in Serbia and consequently he could not fulfill the conditions for the ordinary naturalization of foreigners. Currently, he can only continue living in Serbia without the solved status and at risk of deportation or to leave his family and go to the state whose citizenship he possesses but with no effective bond to it.

After initiating a procedure upon the complaint filed by Praxis and Women’s Space from Nis to the Commissioner for Protection of Equality, it was established that the owner of the Pizza Shop “Marconi - Rim” from Nis discriminated against a Roma woman in establishing employment relationship.

Specifically, after publishing an advertisement offering employment in the Pizza Shop  “Marconi - Rim” from Nis, Praxis and the organization Women’s Space carried out situational testing in which two persons, one Roma woman and one non-Roma woman, of similar age, work experience and other characteristics, tried to establish employment relationship with this employer. Despite of it, the employer had the intention to employ only the person who did not belong to Roma ethnic minority.

Since the act of discrimination was made probable by delivering the report on conducted situational testing, statements of the testers and the witnesses of conducted testing, the burden of proof was placed on the employer to prove that the principle of equality had not been violated in this case. For this reason, the employer was obliged to prove that there were objective reasons for which the tester who was of Roma ethnicity was not offered employment in the pizza shop, the reasons which were in no way related to her ethnicity and which provided objective and reasonable justification of such acting. However, in this case, the owner of the Pizza Shop “Marconi - Rim” from Nis did not do what was required, nor had he declared against the claims in the complaint at all.

In this procedure, the Commissioner pointed at the fact that the owner of the pizza shop had complete freedom to choose the person he wished to employ, evaluating the professional knowledge and capacities. However, in the process of employment, it is prohibited to exclude or give priority to any person based on their personal characteristics, which are not real and decisive condition for doing the job, having in mind the nature and specific characteristics of the job and the related working conditions.

For this and for the implementation of the rule on burden of proof, the Commissioner established that, in establishing employment relationship, the employer denied the possibility of employment to the Roma woman, who was a tester, exclusively because she is of Roma ethnicity, thus committing the act of direct discrimination on the basis of her personal characteristic which is prohibited by the articles 2, 6 and 16 of the Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination.

The employer was thus recommended to respect imperative rules on prohibition of discrimination in establishing employment relationship in the future, to publish and keep the opinion and recommendation of the Commissioner on the bulletin board or other visible place in the premises of the shop for at least 8 days and to inform the Commissioner about it within 30 days from submitting the opinion and recommendation.

Download: Opinion of the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality with the recommendation

Statement by MODS

The Network of Organizations for Children of Serbia  (MODS) has launched the national campaign aimed at improving the parenting through the promotion of examples of raising children without corporal punishment.

We strive for a society in which every child and parents are happy in a family as a place of love, tolerance and respect.

We set ourselves a task to directly include at least 3,000 parents, during the campaign, who practice positive parenting and who may transfer their knowledge, story and experience from their own point of view.

We will be helped by the members of MODS, more than 90 organizations working with children in 40 towns and municipalities, their members, activists and parents.

The campaign started officially on 15 May 2014 on the International Day of Families and will last until the end of December.

The parents who join the campaign will be invited to sign the “Declaration of the Parents in Serbia”, invite other parents to join the campaign by signing the Declaration, share their own experience in raising of children with other parents, like FB page of the campaign, invite other parents to like FB page, fill in the survey of parenting methods, and to post the good examples of non-violent upbringing.

On Facebook page RODITELJ PLUS = batine minus, you can find all information about the campaign, and also share parenting practice without corporal punishment, as well as educational materials.

For more information, contact:

Vojvodina: Tatjana Lazor Obradovic, Know How Center, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +381 21 300 666 4

Belgrade: Dragana Socanin, Association Roditelj, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +381 11 3165-375

Pancevo: Valentina Zavisic, Initiative for Inclusion VelikiMali, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +381 13 344 141

Western Serbia: Jelena Zunic Cicvaric, Uzice Child Rights Centre, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +381 31 510 180

Eastern Serbia: Jovan Marinkovic, Open Club, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: 018 523 422

South Serbia: Vesna Cvetkovic, Association Nexus-Vranje, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +381 17 74 31 484

MESSAGES FOR PARENTS
• Talk to your child, let him know you are there for him/her, that zou understand his/her feelings, develop his/her capacities to cope with the demands of society and growing up.
• Whenever you can,  "meet" your child's behavior. Explain what is happening, why it is important to do something or not, BEFORE the child does something you do not want.
• Note that when your child is spiteful, tests the limits, seems unruly - the child explores, and invites you to be a parent and teach him/her what to do in that situation. Physical punishment does not give the child information about what is happening, how he/she feels, what he/she is doing, why it is wrong or not.
• Physical punishment is more often the result of parents’ emotions, stress, fear, or anger than designed educational step. The child shall not be responsible for your emotions and cannot and should not care about them! When punishing only physically, you "pass" all your negative emotions onto the child, what he/she cannot understand.
• Be ready to grow with your child. Although you are grown-up, you are not finished with the development! With parenting, your development in one part has just begun! This part also includes appropriate responses to unwanted behavior of the child.
• If your child makes you ''lose control '' and you do not see other solution than to immediately physically punish – stop him/her, take a deep breath and consider taking some steps that you can find on FB group RODITELJ PLUS = BATINE MINUS.

This is not the end of recommendations. This is an open list and we invite you to supplement it, share with us your experiences.  Join us, share your experience, send your story about successfully mastered obstacles ...

The Instruction of the National Employment Service (NES) on deadlines and manner of reporting of beneficiaries of NES temporary fee as of 3 March 2014 provides for the obligation of the beneficiaries to report to NES branches once a moth, except from beneficiaries from the territory of Municipalities of Gora and Prizren who need to report every 45 days.

When reporting to NES, a beneficiary is obliged to provide the ID card or any other identification document and employment booklet. If the beneficiaries fail to report to NES branches within the prescribed deadlines or if they do not have necessary documents, they will be deleted from the records of beneficiaries and the payment of their temporary fee will be suspended.   

The adoption of this act endangered the right to temporary fee for the beneficiaries who left their employment booklets in Kosovo and for all those who, for any other reason, do not have employment booklets and did not obtain their copies. Specifically, the Rules on Employment Booklet prescribe that employment booklets are issued on the basis of the place of permanent residence. Having in mind that NES Instruction envisages that in case the beneficiaries do not have employment booklets when reporting, the NES provides for additional deadline of only three days, and the fact that travelling to the place of permanent residence may be the financial and safety problem for many internally displaced persons, it is obvious that owing to this Instruction a significant number of temporary fee beneficiaries may be deleted from the records.

With an aim to solve the problem, a meeting was held in Kraljevo gathering the representatives of NES and Office for Kosovo and Metohija at which it was agreed that NES official would record all displaced persons unable to obtain employment booklets and contact the persons working in KiM municipalities who are responsible for issuance of employment booklets. However, there is yet no data on whether the competent institutions in other parts of Serbia have recognized the problem and taken any activities to solve it.

On the occasion of Praxis’ initiative for the review of legality of the Item 8, Paragraph 2.1. of the Regulation on the content, form and manner of submitting a unique application for mandatory social insurance, unique methodological principles and unique codex of codes for entry of data in the unique basis of the Central Register of mandatory social insurance (in force as of January 2013), the Constitutional Court reached the decision on suspension of the procedure.

This Regulation envisaged that persons of Roma nationality should submit evidence of registration of permanent residence when applying for health insurance, which is contrary to the Article 22, Paragraph 1 of the Law on Health Insurance. During the procedure that was conducted before the Constitutional Court, the disputable Regulation was changed in a way that instead of registering the temporary residence an applicant shall register his/her permanent residence at the address of social welfare centre, based on the provisions of the applicable Law on Permanent and Temporary Residence of Citizens, which again are the conditions contrary to the Law. However, the Constitutional Court suspended the procedure finding that the respective change made the Regulation complied with the Law on Health Insurance.

Unfortunately, by this Decision, the Constitutional Court fully neglected the essence of the problem, precisely the Article 22, Paragraph 1 of the Law on Health Insurance intended for the persons of Roma nationality who cannot register their permanent residence at all. By this decision, the stated persons are still prevented from exercising the right to health insurance, and the disputable Regulation is still contrary to the Law, as the provisions of the Law on Health Insurance do not anyhow condition the access to the right to health insurance for the concerned category of persons by the registration of permanent residence.

For more information, see the announcement: The Constitutional Court Suspended the Procedure for the Review of Legality of the National Health Insurance Fund’s Regulation

M. G. addressed Praxis for legal assistance in March 2014 after the employer I. S. B. d.o.o. delivered him the decision on termination of the employment at definite period of time.

M. G.  was employed through the Youth Association since 2011 as a utility worker. One and a half year after the responsible work at the employer’s, in August M. G. 2012 pleaded to be employed at indefinite period of time or to conclude the employment contract at defined period of time. The employer accepted, and in July 2013 it concluded the employment contract with M. G. at definite period.

In September 2013, M. G. hurt his left index finger during his regular working time while taking the waste away. His finger was partly amputated while he was receiving the medical assistance.

Despite all stated circumstances, the employer decided to terminate the employment contract. Praxis sent the notice of originating motion to the employer for the illegal termination of the employment contract aimed at reaching the agreement and possibly returning M. G. to work without addressing the court.  Since the employer turned a deaf ear to the motion, in April 2014 a lawsuit was filed for determining the illegality of the termination of the employment contract and returning of the employee to work.

Only after initiating a court procedure, the employer reacted by delivering the motion for out-of-court settlement by which M. G. was offered cash compensation. Since he was satisfied with what he was offered, M. G. gave up from the request for return to work and decided to use the given amount to start his own business.

Even though M. G. case was solved by reaching an agreement, there is no doubt that employer’s acting in this case is yet another example showing that persons of Roma nationality are one of the marginalized groups in the labour market.

For more information, see the announcement: Out-of-Court Settlement in Case of Illegal Termination of the Employment Contract