Declaration of a Roma Nation (IRU)

Monday 1 January 2001, 22:12:22 -0600 (CST)

Dear friends !

This document is of crucial importance for all Roma people. It is a declaration of our will to convince world to consider us as equal nation with our culture, traditions and self-confidence.

On my recent travels, I passed this declaration to Mr. Vaclav Havel, President of Czech Republic, to Mr. Amato, the Prime minister of Italy and to Mr. Kostunica, the Prime minister of Yugoslavia. All of them expressed their support to our ideas and our will. I will continue with meeting prime ministers and presidents worldwide, to present our ideas and convince them to support us.

Please pass this document to any organisation or individuality, interested in roma problems, for whom it should be useful.

Thank you for your support

Emil Scuka
President of an International Romani Union ( IRU )
E-mail: <prague_office@romaniunion.org>

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WE, THE ROMA NATION

Individuals belonging to the Roma Nation call for a representation of their Nation, which does not want to become a State. We ask for being recognized as a Nation, for the sake of Roma and of non-Roma individuals, who share the need to deal with the nowadays new challenges. We, a Nation of which over half a million persons were exterminated in a fergotten Holocaust, a Nation of individuals too often discriminated, marginalized, victim of intollerance and persecutions, we have a dream, and we are engaged in fulfilling it. We are a Nation, we share the same tradition, the same culture, the same origin, the same language; we are a Nation. We have never looked for creating a Roma State. And we do not want a State today, when the new society and the new economy are concretely and progressively crossing-over the importance and the adequacy of the State as the way how individuals organize themselves.

The will to consubstantiate the concept of a Nation and the one of a State has led and is still leading to tragedies and wars, disasters and massacres. The history of the Roma Nation cuts through such a cohincidence, which is evidently not anymore adequate to the needs of individuals. We, the Roma Nation, offer to the individuals belonging to the other Nations our adequacy to the new world.

We have a dream, the political concrete dream of the rule of law being the rule for each and everybody, in the frame and thanks to a juridical systE9m able to assure democracy, freedom, liberty to each and everybody, being adequate to the changing world, the changing society, the changing economy. We have a dream, the one of the rule of law being a method, and not a value. A pragmatic, concrete, way how individuals agree on rules, institutions, juridical norms, adequate to the new needs. A transnational Nation as the Roma one needs a transnational rule of law: this is evident; we do believe that such a need is shared by any individual, independently of the Nation he or she belongs to.

We do know that a shy debate regarding the adequacy of the State to the changing needs of the global society—a global society which should not be organized exclusively from above—is involving prominent personalities in Europe and in the entire UN Community.

We are also convinced that the request itself of a representation for the Roma Nation is a great help to find an answer to the crucial question regarding the needed reforms of the existing international institutions and rules. Our dream is therefore of great actuality and it is very concrete. It is what we offer the entire world community. The Roma Nation, each and every individual belonging to it look for and need a world where the international Charters on Human Rights are Laws, are perenptory rules, providing exigible rights. Such a will is a need for the Roma; is it so only for Roma?

We are aware that the main carachteristic of the Roma Nation, the one of being a Nation without searching for the establishment of a State, is today a great, adequate resource of freedom and legality for each individual, and of the successfull functioning for the world community.

We have a dream, and we are engaged in the implementation of it: we offer to the humanity a request, the one of having a representation as a Nation, the Nation we are. Giving an answer to such a request would let the entire humanity make a substancial step forward.

We know democracy and freedom to equal the rule of law, which can be assured only through the creation of institutions and juridical rules adequate and constantly adjusted to the necessarly changing needs of individuals.

We are to offer our culture, our tradition, the resource which is in our historic refusal of searching for a state: the most adequate resource of awareness to the nowadays world. That''s why we look for a representation, and new ways of representing individuals apart from their belonging to one or to another nation. Nowadays politics is not adequate to the nowadays needs of individuals in a changing world; and to the needs of all those persons still suffering starvation and violations of their fundamental human rights. And we offer, we propose a question, while proposing and offering a path, a concrete, possible, needed path, on which to start walking together.

We, the Roma Nation, have something to share, right by asking for a representation, respect, implementation of the existing International Charter on Human Rights, so that each individual can look at them as at existing, concrete warranties for her or his today and future.