Special Report: Discrimination Against Roma in the Yugoslavia Successor States
By Senan Monks
October 19, 2026
Roma are an ethnic group believed to have first arrived in the lands of the former Yugoslavia in the late medieval period. Roma communities in Yugoslavia are not homogeneous and come from a variety of cultural, religious, and linguistic traditions. However, they all face comparable anti-Roma discrimination (antiziganism).
Ottoman authorities enslaved Roma people in this region, and the Habsburgs subjected them to forced assimilation. During World War II, Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia and established several puppet governments to administer the region. These puppet regimes participated in the European-wide Romani Holocaust and persecution of Roma people. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum states that Nazi-aligned forces killed 27,000 Roma in Yugoslavia during this genocide, although other sources estimate a much higher death toll.
In postwar Yugoslavia the situation for Roma improved. Reforms under Josip Broz Tito saw an improved economic and legal status for Roma in Yugoslavia, as well as an increase in Roma cultural expression. However, the view of socialist Yugoslavia as a haven for Roma has been challenged by scholars who argue that discrimination remained pervasive.
During the breakup of Yugoslavia, forces on multiple sides committed numerous atrocities against Roma people. Survivor testimonies recount how perpetrators in the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo subjected Roma to forced population transfer, forced labor, sexual violence, and murder. Prevailing narratives of the conflicts often omit these experiences.
Roma in the Yugoslavia successor states continue to face discrimination. As the European Union (EU) considers several countries in the region ‘safe countries,’ Roma also struggle to escape these conditions. Although antiziganism follows common regional patterns, it has also manifested differently in each successor state since the breakup of Yugoslavia. This report gives a broad account of the main forms of discrimination facing Roma people in each state, assesses the risk of genocide according to the Ten Stages of Genocide, and recommends measures for policymakers to mitigate that risk.
Serbia
Serbia has the largest Roma population of the Yugoslav successor states. While official statistics indicate a total of 132,000 Roma, other estimates put the figure as high as 800,000. Many originally lived in Kosovo, but armed forces displaced them during the war.
Serbia has been criticized for its treatment of Roma people. The ultranationalism fomented during the regime of Slobodan Milosevic led to a wave of anti-Roma violence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most notably the murder of 13-year-old Dušan Jovanović in 1997. Anti-Roma hate crime continues in present-day Serbia, and police often neglect it. In 2025, police denied protection to a Roma family after an arson attack on their home. Authorities have also directly committed violence. In February 2026, a Roma couple received compensation after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Serbian police had illegally detained and tortured them after they reported a stolen car.
Roma in Serbia also face structural discrimination, often caused by a lack of documentation. The Serbian government recently introduced an updated Strategy for the Social Inclusion of Roma to improve access to basic services. However, Roma people still struggle to access healthcare, are excluded or segregated within education, and face forced evictions from their settlements without the provision of adequate alternative housing.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Estimates place the Roma population of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) between 30,000 to 50,000+, although official records count about 12,500. The constitutional framework established by the Dayton Agreement leaves Roma vulnerable. BiH’s power-sharing system privileges the ‘constituent peoples’ (Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats) and excludes Roma from senior political offices. In 2009, the ECHR ruled that the BiH constitution violated the rights of Roma and other ‘non-constituent’ people, but state authorities still have not amended it.
The postwar peace process has also socially excluded Roma. Republika Srpska forces targeted Roma during the genocide in the 1990s, subjecting many to rape, mass murder, detention in concentration camps, and the theft of their land after the war. Yet, historical accounts largely erase these experiences, and institutions have made little effort to document them.
Roma communities in BiH face many of the same problems found in other Yugoslav successor states. Government efforts to promote Roma social inclusion have failed to address inadequate access to housing, education and healthcare, and the authorities themselves undermine those efforts. For example, in 2021, authorities forcibly evicted a Roma community in Ilidža and relocated its members to containers without water or electricity. Crime also leaves Roma in BiH vulnerable, as highlighted by last year’s disturbing investigation into eight people, including a police officer, for trafficking more than 30 Roma children.
Slovenia
Slovenia’s Roma population is estimated at up to 10,000 people. Although the constitution protects Roma, those protections have important limits. Certain municipalities must have at least one Roma councillor, but Roma are not guaranteed representation in the national parliament. Slovenia also grants different constitutional protections to Roma considered ‘indigenous’ to Slovenia and to those who arrived during the breakup of Yugoslavia or from other EU countries.
Antiziganist hate speech is a serious problem in Slovenia. In the weeks after a group of ethnically Roma men killed a man, Slovenia saw a surge in threats and rallies against the entire Roma population, forcing many Roma parents to keep their children home from school. The government reinforced antiziganist sentiment by hastily passing a bill that gave sweeping powers to the police and restricted social welfare, while news outlets referred to the laws as solutions to the “Roma issue.” The governing coalition led by the far-right Slovenian Democratic Party, and its leader Janez Janša have repeatedly used anti-Roma hate speech. These developments threaten to worsen conditions for Roma people in Slovenia.
Montenegro
There are an estimated 20,000 Roma people in Montenegro. While Roma in Montenegro face difficulty accessing basic services and often live in poor conditions as in other Yugoslav successor states, Montenegro lags behind its neighbors as the “only country in the Western Balkans that in its history has never had a Roma representative in the Parliament.”
Language is a significant factor in Montenegro. A large proportion of the Roma population were displaced from Kosovo during the war. Many of these people are fluent in Albanian but have limited ability in Serbian and Montenegrin, making them among the most excluded from society.
Montenegro proposed legal reforms earlier this year to remove obstacles preventing Roma from obtaining documentation, thereby improving access to services and reducing social exclusion. However, pervasive antiziganism and the implementation problems seen in other Yugoslav successor states have left Roma activists concerned about whether the reforms will produce substantive change.
Croatia
Approximately 25,000 Roma live in Croatia. Roma have a particularly tragic history there. The Ustaše regime killed tens of thousands of Roma at the Jasenovac extermination camp. Genocide denial remains a serious issue. In 2018, Croatian public television promoted a book by right-wing journalist Igor Vukić that falsely claimed Jasenovac was a work camp where no mass atrocities occurred. Croatia also lacks memorial sites for Roma victims of the genocide.
In a familiar trend, the Croatian government recently adopted a National Plan for Roma Inclusion, promising to improve the conditions of Roma settlements but lacking concrete plans for desegregating Roma from the general population in both housing and education. Antiziganist hate speech and hate crimes are common in Croatia but often go unreported due to a lack of trust and racial profiling from authorities.
Kosovo
Estimates of Kosovo’s Roma population vary widely because recent data is limited. The 2024 census records just under 9,000 Roma, while a 2010 OSCE estimate placed the population at 34,000 and may be closer to the actual figure.
In the immediate aftermath of the Kosovo War, perpetrators committed a wave of atrocities against Roma, Serbs, and other non-Albanian minorities. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) accused Roma of collaborating with Serbian forces during the war and committed mass murder, rape, and forced displacement against the Roma population. The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) welcomed the trial and 25-year prison sentence of Hashim Thaci in the International Criminal Court as important recognition of the atrocities committed against Roma people in 1999, although it acknowledged that the outcome would do little to improve relations between Roma and the wider Kosovo population.
The displacement of Roma people had serious consequences. Kosovo has no government strategy to facilitate the return of Roma who fled to neighboring countries and conflict destroyed the places where they lived. Internally displaced Roma also faced bleak conditions: authorities relocated hundreds of Roma to a UN refugee camp in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, where they lived in appalling conditions in a contaminated area. Lead poisoning made hundreds ill and killed several people.
Roma people in Kosovo continue to face discrimination, hate speech, and social exclusion, particularly lacking access to education and other basic services. Although four seats in the Kosovo parliament are reserved for Roma (as well as Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians), this has not resulted in effective political participation and decision-making influence for Roma communities.
North Macedonia
North Macedonia has a significant Roma population. The most recent census records around 46,000 people but some estimates have put the number over 250,000. North Macedonia has been ahead of its neighbors in terms of political participation for Roma, becoming the first Yugoslav successor state to elect a Roma person to a ministerial position in 2009. However, the current parliament has no Roma representation.
Hate speech from right-wing politicians is common. Last year, a councilor used an anti-Roma slur and stated that Roma should be stripped of voting rights. There have been several antiziganist hate crimes in the past year, including an incident where two adults forced an eight-year-old Roma child to kiss their shoes at knifepoint and then circulated the video on social media. ERRC has also published numerous reports of police failures to help Romani women living with abusive family members. In 2025, Ramajana Asan was murdered in her home, despite having sought help from the authorities multiple times.
Access to adequate housing and social services is very difficult for Roma in North Macedonia due to a lack of documentation and discrimination from public authorities, especially against those who have been repatriated from EU countries. Segregation in schools remains a common practice.
Conclusion
Across the Yugoslav successor states, Roma face structural barriers to basic services, education, political participation, and police protection. Governments have also introduced laws and policies that disproportionately target Roma, while pervasive antiziganist hate speech and hate crimes frequently go unsanctioned. Roma communities remain politically and socially excluded, children continue to experience segregation in education, and public narratives often erase Roma experiences of the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Based on these overlapping patterns of institutional discrimination, dehumanizing rhetoric, and social and political division, Genocide Watch assesses the situation of Roma in the Yugoslav successor states as Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization and Stage 6: Polarization.
Genocide Watch recommends:
National governments must work with local governments and Roma civil society organizations to implement strategies that combat exclusion and segregation.
National governments must enact and enforce laws that prevent and punish antiziganist hate speech.
Police in the Yugoslavia successor states must comprehensively investigate hate crimes against Roma people and offer adequate support to Roma at risk of violence.
National governments must reform political institutions to include Roma people in post-conflict state-building and reconciliation, both politically and socially.
The EU must reform its ‘safe countries’ policy to avoid returning Roma asylum seekers to places where they face discrimination.
