Thus far I have been working mainly in the Roma Policy division of the Ministry. Roma (gypsies) are a minority group found throughout Europe and are at the bottom of the social strata in all the countries they are present in. In Serbia and Montenegro, they live in run-down settlements, their children are diverted into "special schools" for the mentally challenged (for the few years the children actually attend school), and they recieve most of their income from garbage collection and re-sale. Half of the Roma population in Belgrade are internally displaced from Kosovo, or are returnees who were denied asylum in Western Europe.

I should be involved with Roma policy all summer, but as the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre comes closer, international pressure for extraditions to the Hague has increased. It looks as though I will be spending most of June and early July working for the legal group of the Council of Hague Cooperation.