Guidelines for conducting civil monitoring

Within the RCM projects, practical guidelines have been developed for civil society organisations on how how to monitor and report on policies of Roma equality, inclusion and participation.

Within the RCM 2021-2025, the following guidelines have been developed:

Guideline on assessing the quality of new national Roma strategic frameworks
  • monitoring questions to assess the new national strategic frameworks from four perspectives: participation, relevance, expected effectiveness and alignment with the 2020 EU Strategic Framework and Council Recommendations on Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation
  • guidance on how to conduct the research
  • research ethics and protection of personal data
Guideline for CSOs on national capacity-building: Part 1 – Needs assessment
  • to assist the selected national RCM coordinators with preparing and implementing the needs assessment of members of the national coalitions, and, where relevant of broader Roma civil society organisations and communities
Guide on Sustainable Participation: Part 1 - Mapping the institutional landscape
Toolkit for Sustainable Participation

Additionally, guidelines prepared within the RCM 2017-2020 pilot project are available for the civil society:

The first cycle’s guidelines focus on the structural preconditions of the strategies’ successful implementation and horizontal measures. The second cycle’s guidelines focus on the four substantive thematic areas of the strategies, including gender considerations in each thematic area. Each thematic chapter includes several (on average four) sensitising questions, each of the questions developed into a number of more detailed considerations to be analysed by the local NGOs. The questions are marked either as ‘core’, meaning that they should be analysed in each country, or as ‘optional’, meaning that they should be analysed only if they are relevant for the given country. The third cycle’s guidelines provide detailed guidance on how to identify, select and analyse a topic that can be considered a “non-issue” or a “blind spot”, matching the focus of the third RCM cycle.

First cycle guideline 
  • information about civil society monitoring with examples from past similar initiatives,
  • information about the RCM pilot project,
  • RCM Y1 methodology,
  • thematic chapter ‘Governance and overall policy framework‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Anti-discrimination‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Fighting antigypsyism‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Impact of mainstream education policies on Roma‘ (for Cluster 1 countries only),
  • thematic chapter ‘Comprehensive local case studies’ (for Cluster 1 countries only),
  • formal requirements.
Second cycle guideline 
  • RCM Y2 methodology,
  • research ethics and protection of personal data,
  • thematic chapter ‘Employment‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Housing and essential public services‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Impact of healthcare policies on Roma‘,
  • thematic chapter ‘Education‘,
  • notes on gender considerations in each of the four policy fields covered by Y2 and in anti-discrimination (intersectionality) – developed as an add-on to the guidelines,
  • thematic chapter ‘Comprehensive local case studies’ (for Cluster 1 countries),
  • formal requirements.
Third cycle guidelines
  • aim and focus of the RCM Y3 (‘non-issues‘),
  • how to select the topics for the analysis in consultation with wider civil society,
  • RCM Y3 methodology,
  • research ethics and protection of personal data,
  • formal requirements,
  • open list of possible topics that could be selected by the local NGOs.