Successful story

Following the signed  Commitment letter between the Council of Europe and Kirovograd city administration on joining the ROMED2 program, the National Focal Point together with the  national trainer conducted the first Community Action Group in Kirovograd  on July 1, 2014,

During the CAG meeting we have learned about the problems of the Roma community and about several families without passports and birth certificates. One of the families living in Kirovograd region, moved from Moldova to Ukraine more than 10 years ago. Two of their children were born in Ukraine, but still the whole family was without documents and access to legal job. The only way to earn money for them is to beg near the church.  The family is registered in the local Migration service, but nobody ever explained to them about possible solution for their problem.  Two of the children are enrolled into local school, but despite this the Migration service employee informed the family that they will be deported from Ukraine and be obliged to pay a fine.

After collecting the information about the problems of the local community, the meeting in Kirovograd city Council was initiated. It was chaired by the Deputy Mayor of Kirovograd and the representatives of the CAG were invited to present the situation of local Roma community.   

At the meeting the  issues of social protection, health care, personal identification documents, registrations and  placing the  Roma children in schools were discussed. Particular attention was paid to the family, which was under the  threat of deportation.

As a result of  the discussion, it was decided to establish a working committee that will be  helping  the Roma community to solve the  urgent problems. The first task for this committee was to solve the problem of deportation of Roma family and passport issues of local Roma.  As a result, the local Migration Service employee was dismissed for the lack of professionalism. The Roma family has now the opportunity to issue the passports, since the fine was removed.  The family can stay in Ukraine, the children will continue their education and we hope, with the help of all partner and mediators, the family will get the passports and possibility to exercise their basic rights.  This is only the first result of the program ROMED-2 in Kirovograd.

Zemfira Kondur

National Project Officer for ROMED2 in Ukraine