On two separate occasions in late November and early December, the Belgrade City Police organized public events in the Cukarica and Palilula municipalities in the frame of their project “I am Roma and I Exist”. The events were held in two major Roma settlements in the area, inviting the Roma residents to register and obtain personal identification documents. According to the Ombudsman’s Report, Serbia is home to an unknown number of people without legal identity. These were people who were either never registered in the birth registries or their birth registries were destroyed or went missing and these people did not possess identity documents or other papers that could prove that they had once been registered. From the legal perspective they were “invisible”, not being in the position to exercise citizenship and other rights. Mostly, these were persons of Roma origin. For that reason, the Belgrade City Police decided to implement this project aimed at raising awareness of this problem among the Roma in Belgrade and helping them to obtain legal documents. One activity was used to invite Roma residents of the two municipalities to register and to inform them of the legal procedures in the process. It was estimated that around 1,000 residents attended. The police distributed leaflets containing full information and an explanation of the procedures for obtaining IDs and passports in both Serbian and Roma languages. The police also used the activities to directly communicate with the residents on various other safety issues of their concern, thus further promoting the community policing concept. The project also gathered the representatives of the Cukarica Municipality, NGO “Praxis”, which was well versed on working with Roma in this field, and the media. The project “Rights and Obligations – Knowing Each Other as the Pre-Condition for Respect” by the Šabac district police tackled the issue of illegal immigrants in Serbia who became asylum seekers in the country. The local police, in partnership with local residents, organized events on raising citizens’ awareness about the need for respecting diversity as well as working together with the police on improving the local safety. The Šabac Police District covers the town of Banja Koviljača - one of the two asylum seeker centres in Serbia. The Centre serves to accommodate asylum seekers until a final decision is reached on their request for asylum. In 2011, 1,870 persons (1,559 males and 311 females) approached Šabac police to express their intention to seek asylum; all were issued a certificate that their intention to seek asylum had been registered, and all were referred to the Asylum Centre, which was capable of accommodating 84 persons. Due to the insufficient accommodation capacity of the Centre, most asylum seekers received accommodation in local households. Different ethnic backgrounds, cultures and languages of asylum seekers made their communication with both the local community and local and state authorities more difficult. The local community members were not sufficiently informed what their duties were when accepting and providing accommodation to asylum seekers in their homes. Since the local community safety situation in Banja Koviljača had deteriorated considerably, the objective of the project was to provide information to the residents of Banka Koviljača local community and migrants temporarily residing there of their rights and duties, with a view to reducing the number of misdemeanours, improving local safety and reducing the number of dissatisfied citizens. The activities in the project included, among others: - - - training 12 police officers on procedures concerning asylum seekers; duties of local residents providing accommodation to asylum seekers; and customs of some of the nations whose nationals are most frequent asylum seekers to ensure respect of diversity; providing information to the residents of Banja Koviljača, primarily those who had provided accommodation to asylum seekers in the past, on legal requirements they needed to comply with in order to provide these services as well as their duties when accommodating asylum seekers in their homes, to avoid misdemeanour liability; providing information to migrants who expressed the intention to seek asylum on their rights and duties to create the conditions for them to be able to enjoy their rights as envisaged by the law. 85

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