The Ministry of Equality, through the director general for Equal Treatment and Ethnic Racial Diversity, Rita Bosaho, met last Friday and Monday with various organizations defending the rights of the Roma people.
In the meetings part of the team and the lines of work of the General Directorate (DG) have been presented to the organizations, with the aim of deepening the work of creating synergies of work with grassroots organizations and activists of the Roma people and that these be participants in the elaboration and implementation of public policies against anti-gypsyism. In this way, the DG wants to acknowledge the role of grassroots organizations and Roma activists in protecting the collective rights of the Roma people, as well as learning about the situation of the Roma people in the context of the health crisis regarding discrimination and equal treatment.
During the meeting, the future Comprehensive Law for Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination and those aspects that the organizations consider relevant in relation to the specific protection of the Roma people were discussed.
The organizations transferred to the DG the extremely vulnerable situation in which many Roma people and families find themselves in the context of COVID-19, requesting greater coordination between social services and grassroots Roma organizations. These organizations also defended the need to promote processes of recognition of the historical memory of the Roma people. Gypsy feminist organizations, for their part, emphasized the need to implement public policies with an intersectional approach, which recognizes the interrelation between gender, class, ethnicity and sexual diversity.
The General Directorate for Equal Treatment and Racial Ethnic Diversity promised to promote more work meetings to encourage grassroots organizations and Roma and Roma activists to participate in decision-making, preparation and implementation of public policies against anti-Gypsyism.
