About the project
The Council of Europe Youth Sector Strategy 2030 of the youth sector of the Council of Europe aims at enabling young people across Europe to actively uphold, defend, promote and benefit from the Council of Europe’s core values. Combating discrimination, fostering promoting social inclusion and participation must be a central task to any youth policy. The Youth for Democracy programme has, therefore, among its priorities combating all forms of discrimination, racism and exclusion, including structural forms, with a specific focus on Roma youth participation and combating antigypsyism. Partnerships with Roma youth organisations and networks play a central role in this work.
The work on Roma youth participation is currently based on two main types of intervention:
- Developing policies and programmes in support of Roma youth participation, including the preparation of a Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers to member states, based on a double mainstreaming between Roma and Youth policy areas;
- Capacitybuilding of and with Roma youth-led organisations and networks, including education and training activities at the European Youth Centres.
The work of the youth sector with Roma youth supports the implementation of the Council of Europe Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion (2022-2025). It is run in close cooperation with Roma Youth organisations and network and with the Council of Europe Roma and Travellers Team. These activities follow on the experiences and results achieved with the Roma Youth Action Plan (2011-2019).
The Roma Youth Action Plan: a joint venture for Roma youth empowerment
The Roma Youth Action Plan is a response of the Council of Europe to challenges faced by Roma young people in Europe, particularly in relation to their empowerment, participation in policy decision-making processes and structures at European level, and multiple realities of discrimination.
The Action Plan is initiated and developed based on the outcomes of the first Roma Youth Conference organised in 2011, and complements the Council of Europe Strasbourg Declaration on Roma by associating Roma youth to its implementation. In 2015, a second Roma Youth Conference was organised which took stock from the first cycle of implementation and created proposals for the future orientations of the project.
The Action Plan includes activities of the Youth Department and of other sectors of the Council of Europe, particularly some of the activities of the Team of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Roma issues (for example, the RoMed programme, the work of the Ad-Hoc Committee of Experts on Roma Issues), the Directorate of Human Rights and Anti-discrimination, along with activities proposed by other partners.
The partners of the Roma Youth Action Plan include, first and foremost, youth organisations: the Forum of European Roma Young People (FERYP), ternYpe – International Roma Youth Network. Phiren Amenca – a network of Roma and non-Roma volunteers and voluntary service organisations and the European Youth Forum; the Open Society Foundations, the European Roma Rights Centre, the Roma Education Fund, Salto Youth Network and OSCE – ODIHR also take part in the plan. The project is also open to other interested stakeholders.
An Informal Contact Group co-ordinates the partners in the implementation and evaluation of the programme of activities.
Resources for the implementation of the Action Plan are being mobilised by the various partners, the Youth Department of the Council of Europe, and the Roma youth networks.
The Roma Youth Action Plan gives priority to human rights and intercultural dialogue as responses to discrimination and antigypsyism, together with the development and capacity building of Roma youth organisations and movements. Training and capacity building has, thus, an important role in the Roma Youth Action Plan, not only because of what individual Roma youth leaders may learn and develop individually, but also and especially by what they will experience and do together.
Read the Roma Youth Action Plan