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European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) is the
Council of Europe The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a p ...
’s independent
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
monitoring body specialised in combating
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
,
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of Racial discrimination, r ...
,
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagoni ...
,
religious intolerance Religious intolerance is intolerance of another's religious beliefs or practices or lack thereof. Mere statements which are contrary to one's beliefs do not constitute intolerance. Religious intolerance, rather, occurs when a group (e.g., a so ...
, and
xenophobia Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
. It publishes periodic reports on CoE member states and general policy recommendations. The decision to found ECRI was adopted in 1993. The organization became officially active as of March 1994.


Members

ECRI consists of 47 experts, one from every CoE member state. The chair of the commission is
Maria Daniella Marouda Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial *170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 *Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, da ...
from Greece, since 2020. Each ECRI member is allowed a renewable term of five years through appointing by their respective governments. To maintain membership, they must also abide by these terms of the ECRI Statute:
The members of ECRI shall have high moral authority and recognised expertise in dealing with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, antisemitism, and intolerance; The members of ECRI shall serive in their individual capacity, shall be independent and impartial in fulfilling their mandate. They shall not receive any instructions from their government.
The first ECRI chair was the Swedish Discrimination Ombudsman Frank Orton, who held the position until 1998. It was his idea that the commission should undertake its now well-known country-by-country studies, aimed at providing the member states with country-specific advice how to combat racism and related intolerance. Former ECRI chairs include Nikos Frangakis, Michael Head, Eva Smith Asmussen and
Nils Muižnieks Nils Muižnieks (born 31 January 1964 in the United States) is a Latvian-American human rights activist and political scientist. He had served as the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights between 2012 and 2018, succeeding Thomas Ham ...
.


Actions

The main purpose of the ECRI is to provide a constructive critique, called a General Policy Report (GPR), to countries on their actions and legislature to improve the welfare of the minority groups residing within the nation. The ECRI also pens its reports itself, and not the country being examined, which differentiates it from
CERD The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third -generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discri ...
at the United Nations. Merja Pentikäinen relays the ECRI's desire for immigrants and resident non-EU citizens' full integration and participation in EU societies. In particular, the ECRI is a strong advocate of the integration of the
Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
people in European society and Romani children in EU school systems. In fact, the Romani are the main objects of attention in most of the organization's calls for integration. However, while racism and discrimination have always been a large part of the ECRI agenda, integration has only started to make prominent appearances in recent GPRs.


See also

*
Commissioner for Human Rights The Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent and impartial non-judicial institution established in 1999 by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the council's 46 member states. The ...
*
Fundamental Rights Agency The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, usually known in English as the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), is a Vienna-based agency of the European Union inaugurated on 1 March 2007. It was established by Council Regulation (EC) No 168/2 ...
*
Environmental racism in Europe Environmental racism is a term used by Enikő Vincze (2013) for "the practice of environmental injustice within a racialized context", in which "socially marginalized communities and minority groups" are subjected to disproportionate exposure to e ...


References


External links


ECRI website
{{Authority control Council of Europe Anti-racist organizations in Europe