Belgrade Roma Rot In Cardboard City

Few Serbian Roma put much faith in official promises to tackle their lousy conditions

Author: Zelimir Bojovic
Source: Balkan Insight

In the so-called Cardboard City, crammed beneath the Gazela, one of the busiest bridges in Belgrade, hundreds of Roma families live in what looks like a landfill site.

Most Roma here make a precarious living from collecting and selling cardboard, or from whatever they find in rubbish containers. Walls made of cardboard, wooden planks and nylon offer no protection against rain and snow, so their hovels are soaked through in winter.

Afrodita Saitovic, 18 years old and eight months pregnant, has lived with her husband and two children in Cardboard City for seven years.

Her family fled Kosovo in 1999 after NATO air strikes drove out the Serb authorities. Kosovo's Roma bore the brunt of local Albanian rage for siding with the Serbs - but Serbia has been far from welcoming. Saitovic's family has been without running water or sewage since they got to Belgrade, though the city has now supplied them with electric power.

Despite the fact that she was suffering excruciating pains in her stomach, doctors at Belgrade 's Narodni Front hospital refused to examine her, as she did not have a healthcare card.

"They said I should pay 1,800 dinars (about 20 euro), but I don't have enough money for food, let alone a medical examination," she said.

Saitovic said she may have to give birth in her cardboard room at home. The family's problems are common to Roma all over Serbia. Living in unauthorised settlements, they cannot register as residents and obtain the documents they need to get access to healthcare, education and the job market.

The police require at least a house number in order to grant a residence permit – the gateway into the Serbian legal system. For the slum residents of Cardboard City, this is impossible.

The Minority Rights Center , CPM, a Belgrade-based non-governmental organisation, is trying to help people like Afrodita Saitovic obtain residence permits.

"If the city of Belgrade changes the law and grants addresses to these settlements, a great number of people could gain access to healthcare, the jobs market and send their children to school," said Petar Antic, CMP's executive director.

The health issue is probably the most serious problem for Roma residents of cardboard slums, whose unhygienic conditions provide a fertile breeding ground for viruses and ailments of all kinds.

Osman Balic, head of the YUROM Centre, a Roma non-governmental organisation based in Nis , said poor healthcare cuts the average lifespan of the community very significantly.

"Only one per cent of all the Roma in Serbia live to the age of 60," he claimed.

Dragoljub Ackovic, vice-president of the World Roma Parliament, a Roma lobby group, agreed. He said the average lifespan of Roma in Serbia was only 47, which is 20 years less than the rest of the population.

Belatedly, Serbia's ministry of health says it is taking steps to address this problem. Djordje Stojiljkovic, the deputy health minister, said the government had launched a 60,000,000 dinar (700,000 euro) project, together with the World Bank and some other international organisations. This is timed to coincide with the Decade of Roma Inclusion, an international effort to raise the economic and social status of Roma.

Some Roma activists doubt whether the Serbian government project will get far, given the small amount of money involved.

"Those funds are just a drop in the ocean of our needs," Dragoljub Ackovic complained.

He said the health ministry was not truly interested in tackling the poor health of the Roma. "All they want to do is to implement some projects so they can say they are working on something," he said.

One of the many problems involved in addressing the Roma community's plight is the lack of hard information.

No one knows exactly how many Roma live in dire poverty. The most recent government survey, from 2002 to 2003, suggested only that more than 80 per cent of Roma in Serbia lived in impoverished areas, most of them concentrated in some 600 unauthorised settlements.

Zarko Sunderic, from the deputy prime minister's team on poverty reduction, said, "Around 35 per cent of Roma have no access to a water supply, 65 per cent have no sewage systems, 45 per cent have no proper streets in their settlements and about one tenth of Roma live without electricity."

Sunderic added that few Roma children were vaccinated against diseases. "Tuberculosis, skin and venereal diseases, as well as asthma, are common among both grown-ups and children," he said.

Unofficial estimates suggest about 30,000 of the 100,000 Roma in Belgrade live in unsanitary settlements such as Cardboard City. One is Halid Hasani, 32, who lives there with his wife and two daughters.

Since the last rainfall, the family cannot use one of their rooms, fearing that the ceiling may fall in as they sleep. But the biggest problem is the lack of water and sanitation, Hasani said.

"We used to go for water to the nearby gravel pit, but the security guards there now often refuse to give us water," he added.

Elizabeta Maloku, 24, also from Cardboard City, said her biggest problem was the rats that swarmed all around the place, keeping her awake at night.

Her daughter is already an invalid at only four years old, after being born with a lump on her neck. Typically, doctors would not treat her without a healthcare card.

Antic said such people are living in a kind of limbo, with their children growing up illiterate and wholly unequipped for life in wider society.

"If they don't get the help, the consequences could be alarming", he said, pointing to the obvious danger of these children falling into lives of crime.

Dragoljub Ackovic fears that the Roma cannot rely on the good will of Serbian officials but should put their faith in international pressure instead.

"If Serbia wants to adopt European standards and join the European Union, then it must look after the Roma people and their health," he said.

In the meantime, the residents of Cardboard City rely on their own resources, as they have always done.

"If you have the money, you can get medical treatment," Ajeti Ilfan, 43, said. "If you can't, you might as well drop dead."

Zelimir Bojovic is a Deutsche Welle correspondent in Belgrade. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication. This article was published with support from Freedom House.