Sir, - In a recent Editorial (August 21st), you called for our politicians to show leadership in opposing the frightening growth of racism in Irish society. Such leadership is long overdue. Some politicians have fuelled racist attitudes by their comments on asylum-seekers and Travellers while the Government has done little to improve matters by its persistently negative and unwelcoming attitude to asylum-seekers and would-be immigrants.
There is one step the Government could take straight away to signal a determination to combat racism. It could ratify the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and its individual complaints procedure. It is shameful that successive governments did not do so before now. Ireland is the only EU member-state that has not ratified the convention (which has been ratified by 160 states already).
Ratification would mean that Irish governments would have to report to a UN committee every two years on their progress in eliminating racial discrimination. That would be a useful and salutary exercise, keeping up pressure on the Government and letting us see what an international body thinks of our efforts in this area. The right of individual complaint would reassure victims of racial discrimination that if they could not get redress in Ireland they could appeal to an outside body.
For years Irish governments have pleaded that we could not ratify this convention until we had introduced anti-discrimination legislation here. That argument has gone now that the Equal Status Act has been passed. There is no longer any excuse for not ratifying the convention immediately.
There is a European preparatory meeting in October for next year's UN-sponsored World conference Against Racism. It would send a clear message to people in Ireland and save a lot of embarrassment internationally if the Government could announce Ireland's ratification of the convention at that meeting. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Farrell, Parliament Street, Dublin 2.