The Network of Committees for Human Rights in Serbia is implementing Human Rights Internship Programme by the Open Society Institute for the first time. The process of designing this project and its implementation has been a challenge. We embraced the opportunity to share knowledge, skills and experiences, to learn and to teach, and to benefit from a year-long research to the benefit of vulnerable and marginilised groups and communities at local level.

In 2009, the CHRIS Network was invited to host a recent graduate of Master’s and LL.M. programs in the social sciences, law, and humanities to the human rights sector as selected from the pool of the grantees of the OSI Human Rights and Governance Grants Program for its capacity to host interns and having a proven track record in the human rights area of work. In the beginning of 2010, the Network was joined by Miss Alla Leukavets who came to implement a research project “Participation of human rights organisations in solving conflicts between Roma and non-Roma groups and further Roma integration efforts in society in Serbia and the neighbouring states“. Based on this research, advocacy strategies and activities should be designed which will involve the CHRIS Network members organisations in processes of modelling, implementation, and follow up of public policies at local level for Roma population as one of the vulnerable and marginalised groups in the country.

The internship objective is to conduct the research on the problems of Roma minority in Serbia with a focus on education, in particular pre-school education and introduction of teaching assistants in schools. The research question posed is: "To what extent are Romany children integrated in educational system and what are the ways of improving the quality of their education: analysis of best practices in Serbia and other countries in the region." In answering this question, information and data have been gathered about actual situations in 5 Serbian cities where the Network operates. Furthermore, some more activities in analyising legislation, state programmes, and presenting the examples of successful projects in Serbia and abroad have been undertaken. The main methods of making the research are interviews and document analysis.

The topic of solving the existing conflict between Roma and non-Roma groups has been on the agenda of the organization for a long time and has not lost its relevance since. One of the important sections of the paper which is devoted to the establishment of strategic contacts with the other human rights NGOs corresponds to the programme goals of Chris Network contained in the Action Plan for the period 2011 - 2014. The examination of this issue will shed more light on the power politics behind it especially in the context of the future accession of Serbia into the EU, and the potentials of human rights organisations to advocate actively in small communities contributing to solving the problem of social integration of Roma in Serbia.