World Racism Conference to examine remedies

As preparations continue for the UN's World Conference Against Racism to be held next year in South Africa, the conference's Executive Coordinator Jyoti Singh arrived in the country this week for discussions with the government on final arrangements.

The world conference, to be held in Durban from 31 August to 7 September 2001, is the first such meeting since Geneva in 1983. Its aim is to tackle the issues of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The themes to be addressed at the Durban meeting include an examination of the causes of racism, the situations faced by its victims, and a look to the future at what can be done to eradicate the scourge.

"The concept evolving is of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic societies which enable all components of a national society to practice and benefit from the concept of total equality and to see diversity, not as a problem, but as a gift," Singh told IRIN. "No country supports racism. The issue is how to change social behaviour, social
attitudes."

He said that preparatory meetings have highlighted problems of intolerance that are universal, but in addition issues that are also highly specific to regions and individual countries that the World Conference must equally address. "They are all related to one broad theme: The violation of human rights," he added.

Singh, appointed by Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in her capacity as Secretary-General of the World Conference, said the focus of the first two international gatherings on racism in Geneva in 1978 and 1983, was apartheid. At next year's Durban conference, "a lot of people are going to be looking with interest at what has been done here in a post-apartheid South Africa," Singh said.

He stressed that the Durban Conference would not be an attempt to legislate racism and intolerance away, but a learning experience to establish "good practices" for a "much more complex and much more diverse world" of the 21st century. "You can't legislate everything, but you can make a number of changes in situations to try and bring justice through education and a process of social change."

Singh pointed out: "A lot of people say the whole problem of racism is related very deeply to poverty. But I don't think that we can wait for the problem of poverty to be resolved when there are issues prone to solution at a practical level."