Global conferences are like ships in troubled waters — caught in the rough currents of colliding views and acrimonious exchanges, they find it difficult to reach their actual destinations. The latest global summit on racism, which concluded in Geneva last week, is no exception. “We have had some rough moments in the process,” is how Navanethem Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights describes it. Known for her no-nonsense approach to feisty legal problems, Pillay, who was a former judge in South Africa, had to put up with conflicting pulls and pressures from different camps with unbridgeable views.
The intended purpose of the meeting was to go beyond what was agreed at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance eight years ago in Durban, South Africa. That summit brought nations together to address several divisive issues stemming from race and racial discrimination, one of the oldest scourges known to humanity. It included issues dealing with slavery and the reparation for slaves, the rights of indigenous people who became victims of the policies of grab of dominant communities the world over, the right to freedom of speech and continued discrimination in one form or the other.
The Geneva conference was tasked to go beyond the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) in laying out the roadmap for implementing past commitments as well as to deal with current challenges. After all, the problems stemming from racism have not changed during the last eight years? Surely, there is no dearth of new racial problems cropping up from developments such as the ‘war against terror’, the travails of immigrants in their new locations, the forced eviction of indigenous people from their lands in the name of development and globalisation, and the continued occupation of territories by militarily-powerful nations. Besides, absolute poverty, malnutrition and sordid economic conditions contribute to racism in no small measure.
Little wonder that the so-called Durban review had to face tough challenges, given the intransigent positions adopted by some powerful countries. Some of them even denounced the five-day meeting as a ‘hate-fest’ for countries and groups out to win a ‘political war’ even before it started. They campaigned ceaselessly for a boycott on the pretext that it was a meeting for anti-Semitic outbursts.
On the other side of the divide, a group of countries, backed by powerful allies in the West, wanted to blame one country in West Asia for all the problems of the modern world. Despite the repressive policies these nations follow in their own countries, often bordering on racism, they wanted to throw all the muck at this one West Asian nation.
Against this backdrop, the boycott by Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany, and later the United States, among others, was an unwise move. For one, these countries lost the right to criticise the summit’s outcome. Second, some of them, including the US, had actually participated in the preparation of the draft programme of action — they had even succeeded in having their way on how the draft was to be worded on some divisive issues. The US boycott, particularly when it has elected an African-American president for the first time, sent out the wrong signal. It reinforced the view that Washington’s absence was engineered by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organisation in Washington.
So, a meeting that intended to chalk out the course of action for governments to implement the DDPA and address new issues concerning racism got hijacked. It was dominated by the headlines of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ranting and raving about Israel and the vicious propaganda launched by pro-Israel groups led by Professor Alan Dershowitz. The professor described anybody who differed from the current Israeli project in West Asia as a racist — others in his list of racists included Mahatma Gandhi and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Despite all these cacophonous developments, there was consensus at large among around 180 nations on a document for governments to implement ‘strategies aimed at protecting current and future victims’ of racism. So, Pillay is right to describe the event not as a ‘hate-fest’, but a successful journey towards combating racism. Of course, it is a different matter that the governments of various countries could sleep over these strategies for another eight years!
