The Romani Voice in World Politics: The United Nations and Non-State Actors by Ilona Klimova-Alexander & Ilona Klimova

Author:Ilona Klimova-Alexander & Ilona Klimova [Klimova-Alexander, Ilona & Klimova, Ilona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Social Science, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780754641735
Google: FgokDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 2908914
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Using Informal Strategies to Pursue Goals Beyond the Limit of Consultative Status

Even with consultative status, the results of using informal strategies by Romani activists were insignificant, apart from increasing their publicity, as now detailed. They consisted of private meetings with UN officials, letters to UN officials, other written appeals, participation of UN administration and UN member state representatives at World Romani Congresses, and giving press conferences at UN headquarters.

Private Meetings with UN Officials The only recorded meeting with a UN official since the IRU gained consultative status is the second consultation with van Boven of the Division immediately after the 1981 Congress on 22 May (Puxon 1981; van Boven 1980). The new IRU President Sait Balic and Vice-President Romani Rose met with him to pledge for recognition of the Roma as a national minority (News and Reviews 1981; Puxon 30 November 2002). As has happened several times before and after, they were told that such recognition is actually not in the competence of the UN, but of individual states (van Boven 13 December 2002).

Letters to UN Officials I tracked down only two occasions of direct letters to UN officials. In 1992, IRU officials resorted to rallying support for adoption of resolution 1992/65 by sending letters to the delegates of member states attending the 48th session of the Commission (see p. 35). These letters reminded delegates of the Subcommission Resolution 1991/21, a copy of which was enclosed with the letters, and argued that the Commission should follow this resolution during its 48th session by examining its recommendations and adopting it as the Commission’s resolution (1992/65) (see pp. 41–2). The letters also argued that the adoption of such a resolution would contribute to addressing the root causes of Romani East-West migrations, which had become a topical issue (see e.g. Matras 2000). The IRU officials expressed the hope that the delegation would support their lobbying efforts by adopting the 1992/65 resolution (Gheorghe and Hancock 1991b). This, along with other IRU efforts, paid off, as the resolution was passed (see pp. 121–3).

Nicolae Gheorghe also wrote on behalf of the IRU to the Director of the CHR, asking him for support for a seminar and workshop on the social, legal and political status of Roma that would bring together Romani activists from various countries, experts on specific human rights issues, and representatives of nation-state governmental organizations, IGOs and NGOs (Gheorghe 1991a: 6). The seminar was eventually realized in Snagov, but under the auspices of the Ethnic Federation of Roma in Romania, PER and the Romanian government (see PER 1994).

Other Written Appeals Virtually every time there was an important meeting of IRU officials which produced a written document with demands, these demands included requests to the UN. For example, when the IRU co-organized a conference on Romani issues in 1991 (‘East confronting West: Regional and Local Policies concerning Romanies,’ Rome, 20–26 September), the press release of this conference announced that the participants had called for the UN and regional organizations to monitor state policies towards Roma,

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