Macedonian Prime Minister, who participates at the conference on "Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015", made an address on the national strategy for more successful inclusion of Roma into the society.
"The history of Roma is followed by exiles, discrimination and poverty despite the fact that they comprise the largest minority in Europe. But today, when we are striving after democratic, prosperous and united Europe, and the issue of minority rights protection becomes one of the top priorities of the Union, there is no doubt that the Roma status improvement is an issue we should pay special attention to," Buckovski said.
According to him, the experiences show that the traditional approach in solving the minority issues when speaking about Roma do not give the expected results.
Macedonian PM, as MIA's special correspondent reported from Sofia, said that in Macedonia live 53,879 Roma comprising 2,66 percent of the total population, who enjoy all democratic rights.
"Macedonia is the first country that recognized the Roma population as a constitutional nation. The Roma population has actively participated in building the democratic Macedonia. Today, the Roma population has its MP in the Macedonian Parliament and maintaining the present participation in the government at a deputy minister's level", Buckovski said, adding that the only Roma municipality in Europe is in Macedonia.
He stressed that in Macedonia there was no segregation in education as in other countries and the number of Roma population with completed secondary education is constantly increasing and that there were are also two Roma private TV stations, national TV program on Roma language and Roma newspapers.
"Macedonian Government is preparing a special National Roma Strategy that will outline the consistent policy for solving the specific issues that the Roma community is faced with", Buckovski said.
He added that the Strategy is an expression of will and firm determination of the Government to narrow the gap between the Roma and the majority of population in order to promote the real multicultural society.
The participants of the conference signed a joint Declaration on the initiative "Decade on Roma Inclusion", aiming at inclusion of Roma population in the social and economic life in the society.
The Decade will run from 2005 to 2015. The objective is to speed up and scale up social inclusion and the economic status of Roma by: setting a limited number of quantitative national goals for improvements in priority areas and the establishment of the necessary information base to measure progress toward these goals; developing and implementing national action plans to achieve those goals; and regular monitoring of progress against the goals, and adjusting action plans as necessary over the Decade.
The Decade planning is informed by an International Steering Committee (ISC) made up of government representatives, Roma from each country, international donors, and other international organizations.
These activities are to be done in a transparent way and are to include the participation of Roma civil society and international organizations. The Decade is an open process and other countries, including EU member states, are welcome to join the initiative.