A growing number of Western countries are joining the United States and Israel in boycotting the United Nations World Conference on Racism, which opened today in Geneva, Switzerland. Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and New Zealand all announced they would boycott the conference soon after the US announced its formal decision not to attend Saturday. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the opening session he was “profoundly disappointed” at the boycotts.
As the conference began, Israel said it was recalling its ambassador to Switzerland. The protest came as the Swiss president met the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is to address the UN conference later today.
The meeting is a follow-up to the first world conference to discuss racism which was held in Durban, South Africa, in August of 2001 and is meant to review progress that’s been made in the fight against racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.
President Obama defended the boycott decision at a news conference in Trinidad on Sunday, citing concerns over adopting language from the 2001 final document and its expressions of, “antagonism towards Israel.” He said participating in the conference, “would have involved putting our imprimatur on something that we just don’t believe.”
These countries have not come to the table with clean hands. They have never really meant to participate and really be held accountable for the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, a document they all signed onto in 2001, the exception of Israel and the United States. At least the United States and Israel are being consistent in their position. However, these other countries are quite hypocritical in their withdrawal. If these countries had come, they would have received a failing grade, because they have done little to nothing to implement the Program of Action.
The Durban Declaration and Program of Action is an excellent blueprint. There was nothing in that document that was racist, anti-Semitic. It was an expression of goodwill. It was an expression of encouragement in terms of the peace process in the Middle East. And it is an excellent document and a blueprint that countries should adopt in working to eradicate racism.
The US and other Western countries say the draft final document contains objectionable language that could single out Israel for criticism. But all references to the Israel and the Middle East were removed from the draft document, and Palestinian civil society groups are critical of how Israel’s actions against Palestinians have now been excluded from the framework of the conference.
Neither the original Durban Declaration and Program of Action nor current drafts include any inciting language against Israel. In the initial Durban documents of 2001, the only time Israel is mentioned it’s mentioned as a state entitled to security like all other states. So there has never been any sort of language that could be declared racist. And it makes you really wonder which documents people are referring to when they say they are antagonistic.
This is very disappointing when US has first African American president. And many of the people of African descent here have expressed their disappointment in Barack Obama, that we feel that he has come in, and he has talked about change.
“We feel that at the very least he should have expressed and shown some goodwill and some good faith and, in his whole agenda on change, to come here, to actually read the document and not listen just to the pro-Israeli lobby, but to send a delegation and to show that he really is committed to change and he really is committed to an anti-racism agenda, and to do the right thing and to have participated. We are very surprised, we are very disappointed. And quite frankly, I think that this is a black eye on the Obama administration”, Margaret Parsons said.
It’s important to note that this unholy and cynical alliance between what is predominantly white Western countries is them not wanting to have to address the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization, the occupation of Palestine, and the expropriation of indigenous people’s lands and resources.
A lot has been achieved since 2001. Many regions of the world, many countries have taken the Durban Declaration and Program of Action very seriously and have moved it forward, countries such as Brazil. The Afro-Latino and indigenous communities in regions in South America have seen not full and complete progress, but significant progress.
Discusion:
Margaret Parsons, Executive Director of African Canadian Legal Clinic. She participated in the original Durban conference in 2001 and all the preparatory meetings for the review conference.
Ingrid Jaradat, Director of the Bethlehem-based BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.
– from democracynow.org