|
Matthew Vella
The National Council of Women has urged government to take up a national educational campaign to foster tolerance and acceptance of diversity, in an end-of-year resolution on integration and immigration.
At its annual general meeting, the council issued recommendations on a national integration programme to offer information and advice, and the teaching of language and customs, to foreign migrants on arrival.
The council said integration of migrants was “vital” to social cohesion, otherwise there was a risk of social exclusion and alienation of migrants and their descendants.
In the resolution, the council said an integration programme had to include equal treatment in the labour market, and integration in cities that would avoid “impoverished segregationist urban ghettoes.”
The NCW also called for the detention period for asylum seekers to be used to provide training and skills for better integration. “The transposition and implementation of existing asylum-related instruments in particularly temporary protection and minimum standards for reception conditions are consistent with the obligations stemming from international conventions on human rights and the 1951 Geneva Convention,” the council said.
The Maltese government is bound by European legislation on minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers, to grant asylum seekers applying for refugee status access to the labour market within at least a year of their application.
The directive also allows asylum seekers to seek vocational training as they await permission to enter the labour market. Asylum seekers will also keep their right to work if their unsuccessful application for refugee status is appealed, until the appeals process is finalised.
|
