COVER PAGE

A survey on immigrant and ethnic minority group's experiences of discrimination and racist crimes ('EU MIDIS') in the European Union countries by the Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has found high level of discrimination and victimization against them. Many racist incidents are not reported to the police or to any other organisation. Knowledge of anti-discrimination legislation is low, and there is a lack of trust in complaints mechanisms. Muslims surveyed do not consider religion to be the main reason for their discrimination. The findings also showed that wearing traditional or religious clothing did not increase the likelihood of discrimination. On average 1 in 3 Muslim respondents of the survey said they were discriminated against in the past 12 months, and 11 per cent experienced a racist crime. The highest levels of discrimination occurred in employment, it was pointed out.

FRA Director Morten Kjaerum said, "The high levels of discrimination in employment are worrying. Employment is a key part of the integration process. It is central to the contributions that migrants make to society, and to making such contributions visible. Discrimination may hamper the integration process".

In common with other minority groups, most Muslim respondents (79%) do not report discriminatory incidents and cases of racist crime to any organization, including the police, or NGOs. Young Muslim respondents, in particular, indicate that they have little faith in the police as a public service. People without citizenship and those who have lived in the country for the shortest period of time are less likely to report discrimination.

Overall, 59% of Muslim respondents believe that 'nothing would happen or change by reporting', and 38 per cent say that 'it happens all the time' and therefore they do not make the effort to report incidents.

The survey also asked questions about contact with law enforcement bodies, so as to identify possible experiences of discriminatory treatment. On average, 25 per cent of Muslim respondents stated that they had been stopped by the police in the last 12 months. Of those who had been stopped, 40 per cent considered that they were stopped on the basis of their ethnicity ('ethnic profiling').

Of those Muslim respondents who experienced discrimination in the past 12 months, the majority believed that this was mainly due to their ethnic background. Only 10 per cent stated that they thought the discrimination they experienced was based solely on their religion. In fact, wearing traditional or religious clothing (such as a headscarf) does not appear to increase the likelihood of being discriminated against.

Those with citizenship and longer residence periods experience less discrimination. For example, 41 per cent of male Muslim respondents without citizenship indicated that they had experienced discrimination, as opposed to 27 per cent of male Muslim citizens.

The FRA conducted this major representative survey (executed by GALLUP) in 2008, to examine experiences of discriminatory treatment, criminal victimisation including racially motivated crime, rights awareness, and reporting of complaints. Data is needed to measure social inclusion of ethnic minorities and immigrant groups, as well as the extent of discriminatory treatment and criminal victimisation, including racially motivated crime, experienced by minorities. 23,500 persons of ethnic minority or immigrant background were interviewed. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a random sample of respondents from selected ethnic minority and immigrant groups in all 27 EU Member States, using the same standard questionnaire. It covers 14 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands. It covers Muslim respondents with diverse ethnic origins (for example, North and Sub-Saharan African, Turkish, Iraqi, and ex-Yugoslavian). 24 per cent of the Muslims surveyed were born in their EU country of residence, and 52 per cent had lived there for more than 10 years.

During 2009, the Agency will release further 'Data in Focus' reports on specific minority groups and key issues examined in the survey. A final report from the survey will be released in December 2009, and it is planned to release the dataset from the survey in the first half of 2010.
The text of the survey could be accessed at : http://fra.europa.eu/eu-midis

New energy sources, desert cultivation, development of arid and hot climate crops and salt water cultivation will be focus areas for research.


King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) was opened here on September 22, Tuesday, two days after the Kingdom celebrated the Eidul Fitr. It also coincided with the 79th National Day of Saudi Arabia. Several dignitaries and Nobel laureates were invited for the opening ceremony at which reigning Saudi monarch King Abdullah opened the University which promises to herald a new era of knowledge and scientific research in Saudi Arabia.

The leaders taking part in the launch of the sprawling new facility to propel the Kingdom into the heady global ranks of technological research included Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, and Qatar Emir Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al Naimi, who is the chairman of KAUST’s Board of Trustees, described opening of the state-of-the-art international research institution as the realisation of King Abdullah’s vision to herald a new era of scientific and economic progress in the Kingdom as well as to increase the contributions of Arabs and Muslims to human civilisation.

In a press statement, Al Naimi said hat the university embraces students for higher scientific studies from Saudi Arabia as well as from other countries on the basis of their merit, academic achievements and intellectual capabilities.

“At present there are about 100 Saudi students in the university and we hope that number will increase in the future. The University’s research will focus on developing new sources of energy in the Kingdom,” he added.

” It will also focus on exploitation of desert sand, cultivation in salt water, development of new crops to be cultivated in hot and arid lands and finally, the optimum utilisation of the marine environment,” he said adding that the University will play a vital role in strengthening the Kingdom’s resources and making available of appropriate economic alternatives in future.

KAUST will also work to narrow gap between Muslim and developed world in knowledge.

Born out of the barren desert, KAUST is now a reality, located in Thuwal, on the Red Sea coast, about 80 km north of Jeddah. KAUST’s core campus, sprawling over 36 square kilometers, encompassed a marine sanctuary and research facility around a unique coral reef ecosystem.
The campus blends traditional and regional architecture with modern styles and amenities. King Abdullah announced his plan to establish the world-class University three years ago.

“The establishment of this university has been a living idea in my mind for more than 25 years and I thank God for helping us to realize it,” the King had said during KAUST’s ground-breaking ceremony in October 2007.

The King has guaranteed that his dream lives on by ensuring that KAUST is self-funded through one of the most generous endowments of more than $10 billion and will not have to depend on the vagaries of state funding.

"Two years ago it was nothing but sand and sea. Today there is one of the best infrastructures for research," KAUST president Choon Fong Shih said.

Classes, all taught in English, opened in September with 71 professors and 374 post-graduate students. The masters and doctorate degree students represent more than 60 countries, with some 15 percent from Saudi Arabia itself.

KAUST has already launched joint research programmes with institutions ranging from the National University of Singapore to France's Institut Francais du Petrole to Britain's Cambridge and Stanford in the United States.

And it has created its own research operations spanning nanotechnology, applied mathematics, solar energy, membrane research and bioengineering.

KAUST’s emphasis is unambiguous: scientific research and application to complement the humanities bias of some of the major Saudi universities.

Four strategic research thrusts build KAUST’s research agenda: resources, energy and environment; biosciences and engineering; materials science and engineering; applied mathematics and computational science.