This paper has been produced by the European Caucus of NGOs attending the Second Preparatory Committee (Prep Com) of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Its purpose is to identify concrete actions that states should adopt to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance more effectively at the national level. The guidelines provided have been drafted in the European context, but should be used in a global framework as applicable.

We call on the Prep Com to recommend participating States to adopt the following National Action Plans (NPAs) as based upon Article 3 of the Government Draft Plan of Action. We recommend that each state appoint a special body with an explicit mandate to implement the NPA and monitor its progress. In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is requested to review progress of the NPAs as part of follow-to the World Conference against Racism (see point 3 below)

• Sign and ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) without reservations, withdraw any existing reservations, and make a declaration under Article 14 ICERD allowing individuals or groups to submit communications to CERD.
• Sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (MWC), Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its optional protocol, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of Justice as well as other relevant international instruments.
• Undertake a comprehensive review of existing national legislation and its compliance with universal and regional human rights standards.
• Revise, integrate and enforce national legislation, regulations and administrative practices in accordance with ICERD, MWC, CEDAW and other relevant international instruments.
• Systematically and routinely collect gender and desegregated data on the forms, manifestations and effects of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
• Establish an independent Human Rights Ombudsman, with a specific mandate to monitor and combat racial discrimination.
• Create effective human rights institutions (composed of members from targeted groups with a gender balance) with investigative and enforcement power to make all recommendations for redress and restitution against perpetrators of racist acts and speech.
• Implement comprehensive anti-discrimination law enforced by specialized bodies, which investigate and provide remedy in discrimination cases.

2. Special Issues for Targeted Groups:

• Undertake concrete legal action to combat institutional racism and discrimination within national economic, political social and cultural structures i.e. education, health and social services, justice, law enforcement, media, labour markets, housing and access to goods, immigration agencies, refugee councils and other state agencies. When tackling discrimination, states should identify and change institutional policies and practices, including identifying individual discriminatory attitudes and behaviours based on such grounds as race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or belief, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, social status and culture.
• Take concrete actions to counter and prevent residential segregation.

• States must formulate and implement concrete public policies to ensure the institutional development of racial, ethnic, cultural and religious groups identities as equal values of an inclusive society.
• States must develop cultural institutions (i.e. museums, cultural centers, etc…) that reflect the diversity of their populations and the benefit of migration to society as a whole.
• Recognize that ethnic and cultural groups, such as the Sikhs, face particular forms of discrimination because of their distinct ethnic and cultural identity.

• We urge states to denounce the anti-Roma racism and discrimination against Roma, Gypsies, Sinti and Travellers and to implement national policy programmes promoting institutional development of the Roma identity and special measures to ensure Roma, Gypsies, Sinti and Travellers’ equal enjoyment of their civil, political, social and cultural rights, their equal access to development resources and their full participation to decision-making processes at all levels of authority, further to the recognition and promotion of Roma, Gypsies, Sinti and Travellers non-territorial nation.

• We call upon states to establish, review, monitor and enforce legislation as well as asylum and immigration policies that ensure conformity with each State’s obligations under universal and regional human rights standards.
• States must review and ensure implementation of national legislation and policies to be in accordance with the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, particularly Article 13 on ‘non-refoulment’, and must restrain from denying refugees and asylum seekers protection through visa regimes, carrier’s sanctions and ‘safe third country’ practices.
• States must revise and update their definition of refugee to include gender based violence and must recognize gender-based violence as a form of persecution and as grounds for asylum under the Geneva Convention and its protocols.
• States must enable free and direct access to compensatory measures and reparations.
• States must eliminate discriminatory treatment by public authorities, in particular, the police, other law enforcement officers, immigration officers as well as de facto immigration officials.
• We call upon States to abolish all administrative, institutionalised, and legally differentiated practices such as arbitrary and custodial detention of refugees and asylum seekers who have committed no crime, physically abusive methods of restraint during deportation and detention, sexual abuse and violence, as well as restrictions on freedom of movement, speech and association.
• States must recognize that undue stress on restrictive admission/immigration policies may produce negative stereotyping and thus adversely affect persons belonging to targeted groups and the integration of non-nationals.
• States must review current immigration policies to provide for the reunification of family, irrespective of legal status as well as provide specific protection against racial discrimination for women, children and youth migrant workers. In addition, States must provide equal access to services such as housing, health, employment, and labor and wage conditions for migrant workers and non-nationals.

• Sign and ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its optional protocols, without reservations.
• Grant all fundamental rights of the CRC to each child and youth within the jurisdiction of the state, regardless of the child’s legal status, as provided by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
• Improve reporting on racial discrimination against children and youth by collecting detailed statistical data on issues that affect children and youth, encourage national human rights institutions and NGO’s to do the same and make such information available to CERD and other relevant bodies.

2. Education, training and public information:

• Research cultural diversity and the ways to promote and incorporate it into national and international policies and practices.
• Promote positive aspects of immigration amongst the general public by stressing the value of diversity and the contribution made by migrants to society.
• Formal and informal education, public awareness and training of public officials, the judiciary and educators on the dangers of racism and discrimination and the importance of embracing and promoting cultural diversity and human rights.

• Guarantee equal access to education to all, especially children and youth, ensuring the same quality of education for all. States should also consult and allow children and youth to influence the racial equality aspects of teacher training.
• Introduce human rights education in schools and the workplace, including anti-racism programs in the school curriculum and institutions of higher learning.
• Review textbooks and curriculum in schools to ensure that they provide cultural and ethnic diversity, do not contain derogatory representations of minorities, and eliminate gender and ethnic based discrimination. In addition, States should promote positive images of all cultures and ethnic groups in textbooks and curricula and incorporate the issues of historical slavery as well as contemporary slavery, colonization, the Holocaust/Porajimos [Nazi extermination of Roma] and other genocides and crimes against humanity.
• Promote formal and informal education for identity assertion and self esteem building.
• Provide multi-lingual education in order to enable students to benefit fully from the education and, in relevant cases, provide the study of minority languages for those groups who so wish.
• Provide education in the language of those for whom the official language is not their first language.
• Promote training and employment of teachers belonging to minorities and indigenous peoples.
• Actively involve minority children, youth and their parents in decision-making in schools and in the development of curriculum.

• Criminalize the dissemination of racist messages through the media and those organisations which promote racial discrimination, xenophobia or any form of intolerance and discrimination
• Ensure that such criminalization is compatible with international human rights conventions.
• Set up a national consultation body and a monitoring body to oversee racism disseminated via new technologies (Internet, CDs, multimedia, etc)
• Encourage the media, Internet Service Providers and publicity agencies to adopt self-regulatory tools, such as code of conducts, in relation to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, as well as.
• Encourage the media to adopt employment policies that reflect the diversity of their societies
• Support initiatives undertaken by civil society to provide accurate and objective information in response to racist propaganda (e.g. quick response services, anti-racist homepages, newsletters…)
• Provide a state sponsored public-access internet site which provides information on combating racism, promotes positive images of racial, ethnic, cultural and religious groups to counter negative images and stereotypes and provides web links to national NGOs that are active in eliminating racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances.

• Acknowledge that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust/Porajimos, as well as other genocides that have arisen due to racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances are crimes against humanity.
• Acknowledge that the all slave trades and colonization are important contributing factors to contemporary racism.
• Use reparations and other measures to redress the past and continuing impact of slavery, colonization and apartheid.
• States must acknowledge and condemn contemporary forms of slavery, forced and bonded labor, genocide and ethnic cleansing.
• States should adopt effective procurement clauses to ensure the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or belief, gender, as well as other grounds, from all levels of their commercial and economic activities.

• Ensure that positive and immediate action is taken to prevent and redress racial discrimination
• Guarantee the rights laid down in ILO Convention (No. 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and implement the recommendations of the UN Declaration on the Rights Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious Minorities.
• Mainstream the issue of combating racism into all national policies and practices and all spheres of public life, including all stages of decision making. Mainstreaming involves the application of equality proofing, guidelines, benchmarks, good practices, participation of groups experiencing racism, positive actions, data collection, proactive monitoring and impact assessment.
• States must adopt legislation ensuring that all residents enjoy full political, social, economic, civil and cultural rights.

• Ensure that NGOs, trade unions and other interested groups of civil society are actively consulted during the elaboration, implementation and evaluation of the national plan of action.
• Have an open dialogue with NGOs and other interested parties of civil society prior to and during the preparation of national reports to the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), as well as in the follow-up on the Concluding Observations adopted by CERD.
• Ensure that all groups, especially children and youth, are consulted, and involved in all decisions concerning anti-racist and anti-gender policies at a consultative and implementation level.

• Formulate and implement local plans of action with the consultation and participation of local communities that follows the NPAs.
• Councils and other local authorities should facilitate co-ordination and monitoring of local plans of action.

A national executive body should be charged with the task of implementing the national plan of action. The composition of the body should reflect the diversity of the society and include victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Annual review of the NPA should be done by an independent body in consultation with NGOs and other interested parties of civil society.

2. Role of the United Nations in following up the results of the World Conference Against Racism Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should be provided with a regular budget and charged with review and evaluations of the NPAs by the year of 2005.

The Human Rights Commission must be adequately financed to implement and review plan of action post World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

3.3 NGO Forum

The Conference of NGOs should be charged with the planning and implementation of an NGO forum 2005 as a follow-up to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

3. Budget/Funding Allocation:

National governments must establish specific budgets aimed at effectively implementing the NPA'S. Furthermore, financial support must be provided by governmental agencies to NGO’s active in eliminating racism, racial intolerance, xenophobia and related intolerances on a Pan-European as well as global level.