Deborah Harding - A salute to Romani colleagues and friends

15 August 2001

Deborah Harding, right, vice President of the Open Society Institute (OSI) and member of the ERRC board of directors, with Donka Panayotova, a Romani activist education NGO leader in Vidin, Bulgaria.

I have worked on Romani issues in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 1990. As a program officer at the German Marshall Fund (GMF), managing its Political Development in Central and Eastern Europe program, I supported human rights groups and activists who emerged in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania after the revolutions of the last decade. Nicolae Gheorghe, Dimitrina Petrova, Rumyan Russinov, Ferenc Kőszeg, Emil Ščuka, Ina Zoon, Klara Samková-Veselá, Mitko Gheorghiev, Krassimir Kanev, Emil Cohen, Antonina Zhelyazkova, and Zdravka Kalaydjieva, were among the many who received GMF support for their work with legal defence, monitoring and advocacy on behalf of Roma.

Since joining OSI in 1996, I have intensified my contacts with Roma. Today, there are many more NGOs and Romani activists who have taken up the cause of their own people. I have been personally enriched by knowing some of them, learning from them and working with them: Angéla Kóczé, Donka Panayotova, Monika Horáková, Letiţia Mark, Refika Mustafić, Osman Balić, Latif Demir, Ivan Ivanov, Robert Olah, Rudko Kawczynski, Aladár Horvath, Klara Orgovanová, Elvis Ali, Nicoleta Biţu, Hristo Kyuchukov and many others. A point of great satisfaction is that the organisations led by such committed individuals have evolved into mature, effective and respected institutions. It is no wonder that many of those on this list are or have been affiliated with an organisation in which we all take great pride — the ERRC, the premier international Roma rights organisation. They have been ERRC board members, staff and human rights monitors.

Few U.S. funders have shown a concerted interest in supporting Roma. “They don’t start civil wars,” one high ranking U.S. government official told me in 1992. His understanding of what it would take to consolidate democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was framed by his knowledge about the Second World War and ethnic hatreds in the Central and Eastern European region. To him, the Roma were barely a footnote. Today, however, the Roma have emerged as the single biggest civil rights issue in Europe. They are a major issue in the European Union accession process, and if they remain a permanent underclass, the costs of their welfare will weigh heavily on the economies of these transitional countries. Those policy planners who overlooked the Roma while spending the last decade promoting democracy must recognise this as a failure.

As many countries seek to consolidate democracy in this second decade of transition, those of us working on behalf of Roma need to broaden our approach and also think more strategically.

The challenges Roma face in Central and Eastern Europe are enormous and, absent redoubled efforts by Roma and non-Roma alike, intractable. These include massive unemployment, state-sponsored discrimination, deep poverty, and pariah status. The majority are neglected, poorly educated, lacking in employable and organisational skills and with few experienced leaders. Thus, Roma have a limited capacity to change their own condition or take advantage of the few opportunities currently available. The strategic challenge confronting this community is that Roma must address these issues. This goal can only be achieved by developing a group of Romani political and civic leaders.

As funders, we need to finds ways in each country to support the development of Romani elites, so they can choose and frame the issues for themselves and represent their own interests.

In this column, the person featured usually says something about his or her own identity. Many who have written here before have described how they were persecuted. My identity was not shaped by personal or ethnic persecution, although from time to time I have experienced gender exclusion. Instead, as a child I was already drawn to ordinary notions of fairness. I was raised to believe that I had the responsibility to help others. This meant I had to act on behalf of the persecuted and the underdog. My conviction was tested and honed over the years, and in different movements of the 1960s in the U.S. — civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, anti-apartheid. During the many years I lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, I had the opportunity to witness the “might is right” style of dictators and their overwhelming disdain for the average African trying to live as an ordinary, decent human being. Women were particularly vulnerable. They were subject to polygyny and female genital mutilation. They were treated as chattel and not valued for their role as the family farmer. This led me to tackle the status of women in African development with American institutions. Back in the U.S., I extended this interest to work on the Equal Rights Amendment, getting more women elected and appointed to national political office, helping an African political leader stay alive through her politically motivated treason trials and raising tens of millions of dollars for the survivors of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Among all these causes, my most cherished experiences have been helping individuals: a young Cambodian couple who survived Pol Pot, a Tanzanian youth who dreamt of a better life, a street child in Cameroon who came to live with me. My current involvement in Romani efforts to desegregate the schools in the town of Vidin, Bulgaria, falls into this category of most treasured endeavours. Before the end of this decade, I hope to see the Roma take their place as full and equal citizens of their own countries. Their achievement would make my life truly a rich one.