 |  |
This report has a long history and hence a long list of people deserving acknowledgement. First is the Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (RBEC) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Kalman Mizsei who, early in 2001, was the first to recognize the great need for the UNDP to produce a Roma Regional Human Development Report. Without his insistence and dedication, this report would never have come to fruition.
The report would not have been possible without the contributions of the country teams and the good work of their coordinators: Antonina Zhelyazkova in Bulgaria, Márta Márczis in Hungary, Michal Vašecka in Slovak Republic, Sorin Cace in Romania, and Thomas Sirovatka in the Czech Republic. In addition to preparing the national reports, they also coordinated data collection at the national level, working closely with national agencies (the Agency for Socioeconomic Analyses in Bulgaria, Median in Hungary, the Institute of Public Affairs in Slovak Republic, the Institute of Quality of Life in Romania, and Focus in the Czech Republic). Ben Slay from the Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States contributed important sections to the report and did the substantive editing. Special thanks are due to Dotcho Mihailov from the Agency for Socioeconomic Analysis for merging the data sets to create a regional database, and for responding to endless requests for additional cross tabulations or recalculations. Niall O’Higgins of the International Labour Organization (ILO) provided valuable support both as a contributor to the employment section of the report and in terms of administrative logistics. Support from Fabrizio Caponetto of the ILO was important as well. Anna Csongor, Dimitrina Petrova, Dirk Westholf, Rebecca Jean Emigh, Rumyan Sechkov, and Sarah Takach also contributed important boxes to the report.
Special thanks are due to Juliette Hage and Lykke Andersen, who started the project in 2001 and were involved in discussions and debates on its progress practically up to its completion. The whole endeavour would not have been successful without support from other RBEC colleagues, especially Lisa Smirl, Rastislav Vrbensky, Renee Friedman, Sandra Pralong, Sergei Sirotkin, Stefan Vassilev, and Tony Verhejen. The same goes for colleagues from UNDP’s Bureau of Development Policy (BDP), particularly Jerzy Skuratowicz, Dorothy Rosenberg and Benjamin Allen, whose ideas and important data sources were especially useful.
Several other people in UNDP’s Regional Support Centre in Bratislava deserve special recognition: Marcela Moravcikova (program associate until June 2002) and Philippe Hall (junior economist until March 2002). In addition to logistical help and coordination, they provided valuable support with comments, data searches and many extra hours of work. In the final phase of the report’s production, assistance with data checks and Internet research provided by Veronika Krajcirikova and Niki Beliczay was extremely helpful.
Many people contributed comments and suggestions for improvement of the report. Written comments were received from Dirk Bezmer, Mariana Milosheva, Ourania Roditi-Rowlands, Rumyan Russinov, and Wolf Scott. Dan Dionisie was extremely helpful in completing the health chapter with a section on HIV/AIDS. Special thanks are due to participants in discussions of different drafts, including Daniel Hanspach, Deborah Harding, Dessislava Raykova, Dianne Masson-Yensen, Erika B. Schlager, Francoise Kempf, Franz G. Cermak, György Lukács, Ingrid Brockova, István Tökés, Ivan Krastev, Ivana Škodova, Laura Simionescu, Lotte Leicht, Michaël Guet, Monika Wohlfeld, and Marek Harakal. Pierre Harze from UNDP’s liaison office in Brussels was extremely helpful in arranging these meetings. Special thanks are also due to Robert McIntyre and Liza Slay for English language editing.
At the final stage of the report the experts peer group (Azbia Mehmedova, Ilona Tomova, Jean-Pierre Liegeois, Maria Ionescu, Rumyan Russinov, and Victor A. Friedman) reviewed the text and contributed valuable comments.
—Andrey Ivanov, principal coordinator and lead author of the Roma Regional Human Development Report
Bratislava, December 2002