INTEGRAL EDUCATION TO COMBAT RACISM AND INTOLERANCE

VATICAN CITY, 23 APR 2009 (VIS) - Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi C.S., Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations at Geneva, yesterday delivered a speech before the Conference called to review the 2001 Durban Declaration.

  Speaking English, Archbishop Tomasi affirmed that "the stranger and those who are different too often are rejected to the point that barbarous acts are committed against them, including genocide and ethnic cleansing. Old forms of exploitation give way to new ones: women and children are trafficked in a contemporary form of slavery, irregular immigrants are abused, persons perceived to be or who in fact are different become, in disproportionate numbers, the victims of social and political exclusion".

  "The Holy See", he went on, "is also alarmed by the still latent temptation of eugenics" which could lead to "the elimination of human beings that do not fulfil the characteristics predetermined by a given society".

  The permanent observer also indicated the need to review certain educational systems "so that every aspect of discrimination may be eliminated from teaching, textbooks, curricula and visual resources". Media, he said, "should be accessible and free of racist and ideological control as this leads to discrimination and even violence against persons of different cultural and ethnic background".

  The archbishop then went on to underline the importance of a "full implementation of religious freedom for individuals, and their collective exercise of this basic human right".

  "The challenges ahead of us demand more effective strategies in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance", he concluded. "The first step for a practical solution lies in an integral education that includes ethical and spiritual values which will favour the empowerment of vulnerable groups like refugees, migrants and people on the move, racial and cultural minorities, people prisoners of extreme poverty or who are ill and disabled, and girls and women still stigmatised as inferior in some societies where an irrational fear of differences prevent full participation in social life".
DELSS/REVIEW CONFERENCE/GENEVA:TOMASI            VIS 20090423 (340)