Working to secure the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples

Minority Rights Group International campaigns worldwide with around 130 partners in over 60 countries to ensure that disadvantaged minorities and indigenous peoples, often the poorest of the poor, can make their voices heard.

This information pack has been produced with the support of E4D.

Find out more

Newsletter Signup

Sign up to receive news, reports and job postings from Minority Rights Group International.

Subscribe

Support Our Work

With your help with can continue to empower minorities and indigenous communities to speak out for their rights and make sure their voices are heard.

Donate
×

Not just a health worker . . .

Olena works as a nurse employed by Berehovo municipality to attend to the basic health needs of Roma who live in a settlement on the edge of the city. She is also a Roma mediator, employed by MRG’s partner in Ukraine, Chirikli, and funded by our EU programme. It is an innovative set-up pioneered by Chirikli, where trusted locals, most of whom are Roma themselves, act as bridges between national and international NGOs and Roma community members across the country.

IMG_4177.imgonline-com-ua-CompressToSize-Bp6afYa0NpcJ

Whilst I was there in Olena’s warm but very modest clinic, just a stone’s throw from the entrance to the settlement, she was visited by a number of women who brought their small children for reassurance about health concerns, or for her to carry out routine tasks such as giving injections.

Tuberculosis is common, and worryingly on the rise in the settlement according to Olena, along with other ailments such as bronchitis and pneumonia, which are typical in conditions of extreme poverty, but shocking in places like Berehovo, just a few kilometres from the EU border.

Olena is not Roma herself, and lives in a side street close to the clinic. As she picked her way in all too flimsy shoes through the ankle-deep mud of the settlement’s streets, everyone seemed to know her and wanted to chat, often calling her over to their houses. Without her my visit to the settlement would have been impossible, and the affection and trust afforded her, especially by the Roma women, was palpable, as was her concern and compassion for their health and welfare.

phone.imgonline-com-ua-CompressToSize-cighFdByqRMoZ

You can listen to an interview with Olena about her work, recorded in 2017 by MRG’s Ukraine Programme Coordinator and Head of Europe, Neil Clarke, here.