Witness to a thousand-year-old culture, the Roma community celebrates its International Day on 8 April. An anniversary that encourages us to look at these people with different eyes, more curiosity and less prejudice. A moment of celebration and sharing that is particularly felt by our mission in Moldova, which, after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, has dedicated a substantial part of its activities to the integration of the Roma people, and has organised a rich programme of events together with the community and institutions over the past few days.
“We at INTERSOS believe that recognising and celebrating International Roma Day empowers individuals and the Roma community by affirming their identity, dignity and rights,” says Marco Buono, our Head of Mission in the country. “By organising musical and cultural events, we intend to renew our commitment to promoting the rights and welfare of the Roma people and contribute to a wider awareness of the challenges and discrimination the community faces”.
The Roma community is deeply rooted in Moldova. The most recent mapping counted 27,000 people, but due to a number of difficulties – reluctance to declare one’s origins for fear of discrimination, lack of legal documentation, migration – the number could be much higher. For sure, we know that in spring-summer 2022, among the millions of refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, there will also be over 100,000 Roma. And that the arrival of Roma families fleeing the war on the Moldovan borders has created new challenges of coexistence.
Like Elena, a woman we met with her family in the village of Purcari, near the border point of Palanca, on the road to Odessa, in a region famous for its green hills and fine wines. At the outbreak of war, Elena was pregnant, had a difficult birth, lost the baby, which would have been her eighth, and risked death herself. Then the escape, the slow adjustment, the difficulties of supporting a large family, in which there is also a disabled relative. But slowly life resumed: now Elena is back at work, doing small business with Ukraine, and in her new home in Moldova she feels safe, accepted.
“The Roma are bound by a common element: diversity” says historian Ion Duminică. “The Roma population has many different aspects: from the colour of their skin, to the language they speak, to the houses they own, to their economic status.”
A diversity that is a richness, but also drags with it a series of hostile and harsh stereotypes, which translate into complex integration challenges: levels of schooling well below average, difficulties in finding work, extreme poverty. Latent or overt forms of discrimination that in turn trigger ‘adverse reactions’, or ‘negative coping mechanisms’, as they are called in the language of humanitarian protection, such as resorting to child labour to help support the family.
The humanitarian protection programmes conducted by INTERSOS focus on providing people with concrete help. This means: guaranteeing access to essential services, starting with health services, including providing free medical consultations; improving the economic conditions of families, for example through the distribution of household goods, such as washing machines and refrigerators; providing legal assistance for refugees; offering psychosocial support in centres frequented by Roma people; supporting minors’ access to the school system. Essential elements to improve the material condition of Roma families, offering answers to the needs of the most vulnerable, primarily women, the elderly and children.
But that is not all: because material assistance is flanked by extensive cultural work, to reconstruct traditions, memories, artistic expressions that make the community stronger, because they are more self-aware, create bridges of dialogue and foster integration based on knowledge.
Roma ethnic groups are divided into three broad categories: traditional Roma with an accentuated identity, partially integrated Roma with a fragmented identity and assimilated Roma with a hidden identity. Assimilation, the denial of one’s roots, is often not a free choice, but a compulsion, in an attempt to find a job, or get out of a condition of unsustainable social exclusion and poverty. A form of violence, in essence, that risks erasing the richness of a unique culture.