Education and awareness-raising to combat racism, related discrimination and extremism at sub-national, national, regional and international levels Working group III (Wednesday, 11 October 2000)
First, the Chair of the working group Ms. Gay McDougall from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination started with an introduction of the working field and general review of the concrete tasks of the meeting. She underlined that we shall not focus only on colonialisation, slavery and other historic and actual dimensions of racism, but should look for economic and social reasons as well, take into account a globalisation and other social and economic changes in the World. We have to look how those issues are related to racism and how do they influence it.
An Introductory speaker Ms. Monica Macovei (Civil Rights Lawyer) made just after a presentation of her Discussion paper for Working group III where she gives a detailed overview of following points:
History and vulnerable groups
Contemporary forms of racism
Everyday racism
Role of youth, memory and prevention
Human Rights Education
Training of key professional groups/Codes of Conduct
School and other formal education
Challenges ahead
This quite interesting work can be found by participants of the Conference in 'Discussion Papers from Introductory Speakers' distributed in the WG rooms and in the Documentation Centre.
After this introduction Baroness Sarah Ludford, Member of the European Parliament, expressed in her discourse her deep regret that the European Conference even in comparison with NGO Forum looks really "white face", and this working group in particular. She pointed that we should speak with and not for national minorities in Europe. She has touched a lot of topics, and among them was the question, which deserves special mentioning and reflection. When does the pride of a little country or little region feeling itself under permanent domination turns into something close to racism and when does it become a real racism?
Boris Pustintsev touched another point which was according to him ignored both by NGO Forum and the Conference, the topic of permanent racial discrimination going on in the countries of Eastern Europe as a result of the Soviet past and recent Russian politic.
The participants expressed big concern on
Teaching History
Resourcing ethnic communities as a way of inspiration and motivation to
take on the fight in their own hands.
Gender dimension.
Youth dimension.
A gap between formal and nonformal education in all the papers of the Conference.
Life-long education, which does not stop with a certain age (closely connected to nonformal education).
Social exclusion which goes often together with "racial" one but does not play the same role.
Racism in political and public discourses on high levels (ex. Austria).
