The Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, the Protector of Citizens and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) held a joint conference on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the #IBelong global campaign, which aims to completely end statelessness as a phenomenon throughout the world.
The Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Aleksandar Martinović, PhD, has expressed his satisfaction with the great progress achieved in the previous period in solving the issue of legal invisibility in the Republic of Serbia, stressing that cases where a person is not entered into the Register of Births are now only an exception. According to him, through the implementation of numerous joint activities, system solutions have been established for smooth entry into the Register of Births, while other personal status rights have been successfully improved.
Noting that special attention is focused on the entry of a newborn child, whose mother does not have personal documents, into the Register of Births, which efficiently eliminates the risks of statelessness, the minister has said that future cooperation shall be focused on solving the remaining cases, as well as preventing the emergence of new cases, of legally invisible persons, especially when it comes to members of the Roma community.
Protector of Citizens, Zoran Pašalić, has stated that the number of legally invisible persons in the Republic of Serbia has significantly decreased, but that there are still citizens and children who are not recognized by the system, and added that residents of informal settlements are still in a difficult position and at risk of statelessness.
Pašalić has urged the competent authorities to undertake additional efforts in order to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which are still visible in the social and economic segment of the life of members of the Roma community in informal settlements.
The Representative ad interim at the UNHCR Representation in Serbia, Stefanie Krause, has pointed out that, thanks to the efforts of all the relevant institutions of the Republic of Serbia, and primarily the excellent cooperation with the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government and the Protector of Citizens, the number of Roma nationals without personal documents in Serbia has significantly decreased since the start of the global campaign #IBelong, which was launched by the UNHCR in 2014.
As she has stated, UNHCR is satisfied with the progress achieved, and Serbia could become one of the first countries in Europe to eradicate the risk of statelessness in the next two years, until the end of the campaign.
Since 2012, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, the Protector of Citizens and the UNHCR have been making joint efforts with the aim of resolving this issue, within the framework of three Memoranda of Understanding. The occasion of today’s event is also the beginning of an information and media campaign for representatives of the Roma community, for which an information session was held as part of the conference, and experiences from visits to informal settlements were also exchanged.