The aim of this paper is to provide an advocacy tool for reorienting the current approach of Roma policies followed by many international, national and local institutions, including the European Union, in order to improve their effectiveness and achieve substantive results. The paper starts by briefly describing the most relevant policies and measures undertaken by international bodies and European Institutions to promote Roma inclusion, including their achievements and shortfalls; it proposes substantial changes in the current approach in order to accomplish better results; based on different experiences, it then suggests practical recommendations on what should and should not be done.
The paper calls on public and private institutions to follow a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA), to fulfil their commitment to the ICERD, to follow the recommendations of the CERD and to further elaborate on the Common Basic Principles for Roma Inclusion (CBP); it stresses the need to follow an evidence-based and resultsoriented approach and insist on the need to change the way in which the European Commission has been operating in this policy area to a more open, transparent and inclusive one that provides for full participation of (Roma and other) civil society in the design of its programmes, their implementation, monitoring and evaluation and in line with the HRBA.