Education and awareness-raising to combat racism, related discrimination and extremism at sub-national, national, regional and international levels Workshop 3 (10.10.2000)

It was decided that we would talk about concrete propositions for Report from the Forum of Non-Governmental Organisations but obviously unavoidable differences of backgrounds raised up a lot of much less concrete but nevertheless interesting topics. Understandable weal to talk about the things more close to one's own situation showed up different understanding of degree of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism and even Racism as such in modern society.

The main problem of the workshop was the questions of terms. Anti-Semitism did not seem for everybody to be a part of Racism and Islamophobia neither. Some were concerned that multiculturalism does not automatically include multireligionism and the term 'multiculturalism' as such faced a lot of negative remarks. Interculturalism provides much more positive space for understanding each other than just living side by side in multicultural society. The word 'revisionism' did not look negative for some speakers in regard of their own history but looked extremely dangerous for the others. Still some "semantic" conclusions were accepted at least by a majority of people present. For instance it seems clear that the word 'tolerance' as a discriminative by itself should be replaced in Human Rights field by the word 'respect'.

Some participants expressed their personal worries that anti-Semitism for some, anti-Black racism or gender aspect for the others were not enough mentioned or even ignored in the documents prepared by the Forum and the Conference organisers. A lot of people founded the language of the documents heavy and artificial.

After a long list of common and individual traumas, offences and misunderstandings, the proposition of one of contributors to give more positive examples in order to break the blocks of public ignorance, and not only negative ones, sounded very trustable…

The problem, which seemed extremely important for participants from divers backgrounds, was dealing with History. The roots of Racism will stay forever where they are if not to explore the history of colonialism, of Holocaust, of oppressed people. Only public recognition of genocides and crimes against Humanity and education of children in the spirit of remembrance would give a positive base for fight against racism.

Therefore, the primary family education plays an extremely important role and, logically, the education of parents gets its importance.

Fighting "ghettos" in the reality and in the people's head has to be very careful - will of some victims of discrimination to be considered just as individuals can replace and make disappear the feeling of being a member of an oppressed group which can obviously provoke more problems and bi-exclusion.

"Racial" exclusion often is accompanied by social exclusion. The difference has always to be cleared up in order to fight prejudices and stereotypes. For example, speaking about exploitation of Children Labour and the violations of Children Rights in China by McDonalds Company, we do not have to forget what happens with these children if they loose their jobs. Next step for them could be a prostitution… The fight for Children Rights of minorities should be continued, indeed. However, without proper measures against purely social misery this fight sometimes would be useless.

Speaking about education, the institutional racism should be seen as an essential problem since an educational system is usually a fix structure that is very difficult to oppose. From this point of view, the formation of formatters stands on the first plan.

Definitely, the huge field of unformal education was touched as well. Without mentioning all the expressed ideas about its possible forms, we can say that importance of unformal education was evident for everyone.

The promotion of the education in the mother tongue of minorities was seen as one of principle goals of anti-racist efforts in the field of education.

As a conclusion, it was decided to point out
· The fight for Children Human Rights, including investing in teacher's education.
· Funding formal and unformal education and removal of the financial help to the countries where the Human Rights of Children, national and ethnic minorities as well as general Human Rights of every Human being are violated.
· Cooperation of different NGO's and celebrating each other's diversity for a common benefit of the society.

Alexandra Koulaeva
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