Travellers have welcomed their inclusion as a specific group facing racism in a political declaration to be signed by 41 countries including Ireland at the conference today.
Travellers are named in the declaration along with Roma and Gypsies as people who face continued and violent racism as minorities.
The declaration will be signed at the end of the conference today by ministers from the 41 member-states of the Council of Europe.
Irish Government representatives were happy to have the plight of travellers recognised and had worked alongside officials from the UK and Scandinavia to retain the specific mention to Travellers in the declaration.
The governments will commit themselves in the declaration to taking further steps to prevent and eliminate racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance. Mr Martin Collins from Pavee Point National Travellers' Resource Centre in Dublin said there were a lot of parallels in the discrimination faced by Travellers, Gypsies and the Roma community throughout Europe.
He said he was pleased about the explicit reference to Travellers in official documents from the conference, as if they were not named as a category they would be excluded.
Ms Anastasia Crickley, the chairwoman of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, said it was important that Travellers were named as a specific group in the political declaration.
"This conference has been crucially important for Travellers and there has been a lot of support for addressing the particular forms of racism that Roma, Gypsies and Travellers experience as a trans-national minority throughout Europe," she said.