CE wants to combat racism in the school curriculum
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) warned this Wednesday about bullying in Portuguese schools, defending the mandatory inclusion of curricula in the fight against racism and “discrimination against black, Roma and LGBTI people”. On the other hand, it also advocates more training for the police to deal with hate incidents and crimes and “decent and safe housing” for Roma.
In recent years there has been an improvement in the fight against racism and intolerance, but there are still situations that need to be improved, argue experts from ECRI, a body of the Council of Europe, in their sixth report on Portugal.
Researchers are concerned about cases of bullying targeting migrant, black, gypsy and LGBTI students, having heard reports and detected gaps and discrepancies in relation to what inclusive education should be.
In the subject of “Citizenship and Development”, for example, “there are significant discrepancies between schools” in terms of the time dedicated to the subject and the content covered.
If in the initial years, the topics are integrated into the general curriculum, at higher levels, the subject becomes autonomous and as schools have autonomy over the subjects, some end up “not addressing topics such as racism and intolerance against black people, LGBTI or gypsies”, say the independent experts.
ECRI therefore recommends to the Portuguese authorities that human rights education become a “mandatory part of the curriculum , with minimum mandatory content in all schools, including combating racism, intolerance and discrimination against black, gypsy and LGBTI people”.
The experts also call for initial and ongoing teacher training and for mandatory training for teachers on equality and non-discrimination to be encouraged, especially those who teach the subject of “Citizenship”.
In the report released this Wednesday, the advisory body of the Council of Europe recognizes that there are good measures already implemented, such as the Network of Schools for Intercultural Education or civil society projects such as “LGBTI Education” by the Ex Aequo Network, and anti-racist training by the Educar Group.
Regarding these projects, “ECRI recommends greater support”, especially because there is an “increase in cases of bullying, particularly against migrant, black, gypsy and LGBTI students”.
According to a survey carried out by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 71% of LGBTIQ respondents have been the target of insults , threats or humiliation.
ECRI recommends that authorities strengthen actions to prevent and combat racist and LGBTI-phobic bullying, through teacher training, improving the incident monitoring system with disaggregated data and specific prevention policies aimed at the most vulnerable students.
The independent experts also welcome the publication of two practical guidelines – the “Guide to Preventing and Combating Racial Discrimination in Schools” and the “Guide on the Right to Be Yourself at School” (designed with LGBTI students in mind) – and recommend that they be “widely disseminated” within the school community.
The “School without Bullying, School without Violence” plan is also applauded by researchers, who regret that the digital platform for recording incidents does not allow the extraction of data disaggregated by reason of prejudice, age or gender.
The researchers also looked at school textbooks and lament that “almost nothing has been done to improve the teaching of Portuguese colonial history, slavery and violence in the former colonies”.
They therefore recommend that school textbooks and curricular content be revised and that teachers receive adequate training on colonialism, slavery and their links to contemporary racism.
Another point mentioned in the study is the low representation of black and gypsy people in school curricula, inviting authorities to encourage positive representation of these communities and to support the hiring of teachers of gypsy and African origin.
In addition to the issue of school curricula, ECRI has chosen two other priority problems and put forward proposals for improvement: one concerns the way police and judicial authorities deal with hate crimes and the other focuses on the situation of Roma.
The report points out that there are cases of hate-motivated violence in Portugal, which sometimes involve neo-Nazi groups. However, experts accuse the police of often failing to register complaints and of few cases proceeding to trial.
Of the few cases that reach the courts, even fewer result in judicial decisions, conclude the experts, who recommend the implementation of measures that improve relations and trust between the police and some groups such as migrants, black people, LGBTI or gypsies.
ECRI therefore calls on the Portuguese authorities to create protocols and standard operating procedures to “help law enforcement authorities effectively process hate incidents and crimes”.
In addition to these instruments, experts also recommend that police officers and criminal justice professionals attend specific training programs to deal with these matters.
This is one of the two main recommendations of the study released today, which also looks with special attention at gypsies.
“Gypsy people, most of whom are Portuguese citizens, remain one of the most marginalized groups in the country,” reads the study, which criticizes the existence of only a few specific projects for this group, with “limited funding and reduced scope.”
One of the biggest problems for Roma continues to be the degrading conditions in which they live. Experts say that Roma “live in segregated neighborhoods, degraded areas or in shacks, often without clean water, electricity or sanitation.”
Furthermore, in the last five years, “little or no progress has been made” and therefore ECRI recommends “swift and resolute measures to ensure decent and safe housing conditions for Roma living in precarious settlements, including slums”.
The experts promise that within a maximum period of two years they will carry out a provisional monitoring process for these two recommendations.
But the Council of Europe body also recognizes that there are “successful initiatives”, such as the ROMA Educa program, created to reduce cases of early dropout and failure.
However, challenges among Roma students persist, “especially in the transition to secondary education and in combating early school leaving”.
Since the last report in 2018, Portugal has made progress in several areas, such as the creation of the new Commission for Equality and against Racial Discrimination (CICDR).
Also regarding the LGBTI community, researchers consider that Portugal “has achieved significant progress”, highlighting as improvements the creation of a specific action plan, the recognition of the right to self-determination of gender identity and the criminalization of so-called “conversion therapies”.
The adoption, in 2021, of Portugal's first National Plan to Combat Racism and Discrimination is also welcomed in the study, which highlights actions to combat hate speech and hate crimes.
Five years after the last report, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a body of the Council of Europe, today once again publishes the results of the work of a group of independent experts who analyzed racism, discrimination, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance in Portugal.
The researchers conclude that the situation has improved in several areas, but there are still issues that cause them concern and, therefore, they are today making 15 recommendations to the Portuguese authorities.
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