The creation of full employment and more social equality are the most important elements in avoiding racial and ethnic discrimination and prejudices, according to a German professor of social work. Prof Jurgen Nowak, of the Alice Solomon School of Social Work in Berlin, was addressing the Joint European Regional Seminar on "Culture and Identity: Social Work in a Changing Europe" in UCD. Problems of racism and cultural diversity are a major focus of the conference.
"If there is less competition for jobs, housing, kindergartens, etc, ethnicity cannot be so easily used as an instrument to mobilise people in the political process of power plays," said Prof Nowak.
Other measures which could help improve the situation of ethnic minorities were an ethnic quota system, a guarantee that every child has the right to learn its mother tongue at least up to the level of primary school, the promotion of intercultural projects in schools and intercultural training at university level.
He proposed that social workers should study foreign languages, so they could be more mobile professionally. At least one foreign language should be a compulsory part of the curriculum.
Prof Nowak said the emergence of new movements of ethnic and national revival was a natural reaction to the earlier experience of strong ethnic nationalism linked to central government, now supplemented by both European integration and globalisation.
"Therefore I believe we need a local or at least a regional identity. We do not need a Europe of nations but a `Europe of Regions'," he said.
Ms Jane Liddy, Ireland's representative on the European Commission of Human Rights, said the European Convention on Human Rights had played a major role in recent years in affecting social policy. However, some decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights had been disappointing for certain ethnic minorities.
A number of immigrants in different countries had brought cases to the Commission, which is the clearing-house for the court, that their right to a family life was being violated by decisions to deport either them or members of their families.
A young man of Moroccan origin, who had lived in Belgium since he was two, committed a number of crimes for which he had been jailed.
The court found that the Belgian government's decision to deport him some time after he was released was a violation of his rights.
However, she said that a father's decision to leave his country of origin in pursuit of work, leaving his family behind, did not mean he could invoke the "right to a family life" in order to settle his family in Europe. Even in a case where his wife died in his home country, leaving the children alone, and he sought reunification with them, this would not be enough to justify them being allowed into the European country.
"It has been said by one judge that Convention case-law on this question of family reunification shows an increasing preparedness to condone harsh decisions in the field of immigration," Ms Liddy said. "However, the case-law does leave open the possibility of different findings on different sets of facts."
Ms Liddy said the Commission had proved useful in identifying discrimination against people on religious grounds. "It is rather more difficult, though still possible, to establish a violation of human rights in relation to victimisation on racial or ethnic grounds," she said.
She urged the delegates to be aware of the limits of their mandate, and, if it did not genuinely extend to redressing a real ill, to make that clear to others in the field.