DOHA: Qatar expressed its concern over increasing movements against Arab and Muslim immigrants and holy places, holy books and Prophets in a way that contradicts all the decisions and international laws at the recent 16th session of Human Rights Council in Geneva. Khalid Fahad Al Hajri, Acting Charge d’Affaires of the Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations Office, said that Qatar joined all Arab Muslims and neutral countries in condemning the social and religious discrimination and hatred of foreigners. He said that in spite of the progress in developing complementary standards, the international community continued to see various forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance. One of those was the rise of extremist movements against Islam. He also confirmed that Qatar had taken a number of measures to promote human rights. Education on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance had been included in school curricula to enable change of behaviour among the students. He said Qatar had hosted a number of international and regional conferences dealing with religious dialogues and alliance of civilisations. He also reiterated Qatar’s support for the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and said that there was still much left to do by countries to achieve those goals. Meanwhile, Dr Ali bin Sameikh Al Marri, Chairman of the National Human Rights Committee and spokesman of Asian and Pacific Human Rights organisations, urged the Human Rights Council to establish means to finance all national human right committees by establishing a fund and allocate financial sources to support their activities. He said that the fund should be monitored by the governments of each country as such fund under the umbrella of the UN Human Rights Council will contribute in financing all national human right committees to carry out their programmes and activities. He urged all members of Asian and Pacific forum who has been classified as ‘A’ category to welcome the report of the Secretary-General dealing with national human right committees. He said this committee include experts and work to provide information to help agencies of UN to carry out their task mainly in human rights and relief

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