As per the 2011 census, the main minorities of Romania are: Hungarians – 1.23 million people (circa 58.9%), Roma – 0.62 million (29.8%), Ukrainians – 50.9 thousand (2.44%), Germans – 36 thousand (1.73%), Turks – 27.7 thousand (1.33%), Lipovan Russians – 23,49 thousand (1.13%) and other minorities with under 1% (up to 20 thousand people) each – Tatars, Serbians, Slovakians, Bulgarians, Croats, Greeks, Hebrews, Italians, Poles, Czechs and others.
According to the CDIS-UNESCO study, the Multilingual Education index of 52% reflects a relatively good level of promoting multilingualism in Romania, showing that, out of the total language teaching hours in the first two grades of middle schools, 48.33% are dedicated to the official language, 45.00% to international languages and 6.67% to languages of national minorities. In Romania, there are 10 national minorities with access to education in their own language, listed by the Law 282/2007 for ratifying the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Bulgarians, Czechs, Croats, Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Serbs, Slovaks, Turks, and Ukrainians.
The Strategy for culture projecthighlights the role of cultural diplomacy in the improvement of the intercultural dialogue, while education through culture has the goal to improve the intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity. The Strategy gives funding priority to “projects and programmes of public and private cultural operators that mainly aim for the conservation, development and valorisation of the tangible and intangible heritage of the traditional minorities and of the ethnic groups; promotion of diversity and valorisation of minorities’ and ethnic groups’ cultural expression; valorisation of the culture of new ethnic groups, of immigrants and refugees, including their cultural expressions – support for the projects approaching social and economic issues specific to the integration of these groups into the Romanian society; dialogue cooperation and promotion and intercultural skills to carry out new cultural productions; intercultural education, both through participation in training and learning stages in other countries, via youth exchange and through providing opportunities to know the culture of ethnic minorities from one’s country; organising ongoing training courses for the teachers in the field of intercultural education, which should be the basis for supporting the principles of non-discrimination and equality of chances.”
The National Strategy on Immigration 2015-2018 included a direction of action for the promotion of intercultural dialogue and of contacts at all the levels of society through the set-up of multicultural activities within the objective to create an environment facilitating the integration of citizens from third-party states. These goals are attainable through the ACCES program, which supports cultural projects promoting the intercultural dialogue.
An example of a successful project in the field of intercultural dialogue is the Project Migrant in Intercultural Romania. This project was developed in partnership with the League for the Defence of Human Rights (Cluj branch, ADIS Association in Bucharest) and the Centre for Civic Resources in Constanta (in the period September 2012-June 2015). The project was co-funded through the European Fund for the integration of third-country nationals andmanaged in Romania by the General Inspectorate for Immigrations. It included several workshops on these matters, where bills were proposed to facilitate the integration of migrants in Romania as a border-country of the European Union. Furthermore, it included the Festival of Multiculturalism, which took place under the aegis of the League for the Defence of Human Rights – Cluj, member of the International Federation for the Defence of Human Rights based in Paris.
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