UN conference on racism

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This is a Press Release/Statement from the Black Radical Congress
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Black Radical Congress (BRC)

For Immediate Release

May 7, 2001

Contact:
Humberto Brown,
hbrown@downstate.edu
Horace G. Campbell,
hgcc@twcny.rr.com
Jean Carey Bond,
jeancb@worldnet.att.net

STATEMENT ON THE WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM (WCAR)

Contents:

1. Taking it to the UN
2. Why the World Conference Against Racism Matters
3. Preparing for the WCAR: What Happened in Santiago?
4. Overture to Durban: The Struggle in Geneva
5. The NGO Forum
6. Support the WCAR
7. Beyond the WCAR: Imperatives for Justice
8. Resources and Additional Information

--

Taking it to the UN

>From the very inception of the United Nations, Black people
have regarded that international body as an important forum
in which to amplify our voices and focus public attention on
the conditions of our existence. In 1951, political activist
William L. Patterson and artist/activist Paul Robeson
delivered a Civil Rights Congress petition to the then
three-year-old UN, entitled We Charge Genocide. This
historic document accused the United States government of
pursuing policies aimed at the destruction of the African
American people. In October 2000, a delegation of civil
rights leaders, led by Gay J. McDougall, director of the
International Human Rights Law Group, presented a "call to
action" to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary
Robinson, exhorting her agency to address the racial
discrimination that pervades the U.S. criminal justice
system -- from racial profiling to the application of the
death penalty. Stated the delegation: "Our political leaders
speak loudly about human rights abuses in the rest of the
world. They should start by ... eliminating racial
discrimination at home -- and the world should hold them
accountable." This special appeal was occasioned by the
approach of the United Nations World Conference Against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
Intolerance (WCAR), which will take place August 31 to
September 7 in Durban, South Africa.

The WCAR is the third UN conference on racism, coming toward
the end of the last of three decades designated by the UN
"to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination" -- 1993 to
2003. During this period, we have seen the fall of apartheid
in South Africa, U.S. ratification of the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, creation of a "Special Rapporteur" at the UN
to address racism and various forms of intolerance. We have
seen international legal protections of human rights expand.

What we have not seen is any significant decline in the
scourge of racism and its corrosive effects on the lives of
millions of people of color around the world, nor any
pronounced slippage in xenophobia, nor any reduction in
heterosexual hatred of other sexual orientations, nor any
abatement of religious intolerance. So what is new about
another world conference on racism? What is the point?

Why the World Conference Against Racism Matters

The Black Radical Congress strongly supports the WCAR, and
we are appalled by the general lack of support it has
received. If this is the first time you are hearing about
the conference, one reason is that in contrast to the much
publicized UN women's conference held in Beijing, China some
years ago, U.S. media have hardly taken note of the WCAR.
The U.S. government, which gave $6 million to support the
Women's conference, has committed little to the support of
this conference. And thus far, support from the foundation
community, except from the Ford Foundation, is sharply below
the levels of support commanded by the women's conference.

The Black Radical Congress believes that notwithstanding the
limitations of what can be accomplished within a UN context,
the WCAR offers a valuable opportunity for peoples of
African descent and other aggrieved peoples to spotlight
their age-old grievances on a world stage, before a world
audience.

We are well aware that the fundamental changes we seek in
economic, political and social structures cannot be forged
in the hallowed halls of the United Nations. UN mandates
cannot break the punishing grip of globalized capitalism on
the lives of working people; or reorder the budgetary
priorities of the U.S. government to fund more schools and
fewer jails; or rescue the 3,700-plus people on death row in
the U.S., more than half of whom are African American,
Latino, Native American and Asian; or return to the Black
people of Colombia the lands taken from them in the name of
a bogus war on drugs; or arrest the multiple plagues --
medical, social, economic -- that afflict humanity.

We believe, however, that it is wise for Black people in the
U.S. and throughout our diaspora to work this moment for all
it is worth.

It is important to reiterate the international standards and
principles that have been established for the just treatment
of human beings, even as those standards and principles
continue to be ignored and flouted.

It is important to expose the ongoing failure of the U.S. to
comply with the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which it ratified in
1994. The world must know that the United States remains one
of the planet's leading sites of human rights abuse. A Human
Rights Watch investigation has documented that the U.S. is a
country whose government maintains, throughout a vast
network of prisons filled disproportionately with people of
color, an environment that not only sanctions but encourages
rape and various sadistic abuses of male and female
prisoners' rights. It is a country where the inherent
barbarism of the death penalty is compounded by that penalty
being applied in a proven racially discriminatory manner.
These conditions exist in a country that claims to be the
world headquarters of "civilization."

It is important for people of African descent to interact
and network with each other and with other peoples of color
in the same place at the same time -- even a short time --
and work collectively on the same project.

It is important to wring from the governments that comprise
the United Nations consortium -- even if only symbolically
-- a commitment to engage the worldwide fight against racism
and all varieties of discrimination. That is an important
goal, even as we must press our primary struggle, the
struggle on the ground, for justice and democracy in our
home societies.

Preparing for the WCAR: What Happened in Santiago?

Leading up to the Durban event, several pre-conference
planning meetings have taken place around the world. The
mandate for these meetings was to produce regional draft
documents describing the historical and contemporary forms
of racism, discrimination and/or intolerance experienced by
peoples of the various regions. Those drafts were then given
to a special committee charged with merging them into a
single draft "declaration and programme of action of the
World Conference."

The one and only pre-conference gathering devoted to peoples
of the Americas occurred in Santiago, Chile, in December
2000. Present at the Santiago meeting were representatives
of "non-governmental organizations (NGOs)" accredited to
participate in the proceedings in Durban, along with
government delegations, including that of the United States.
The Black Radical Congress was represented by Humberto R.
Brown, the BRC's International Secretary and a member of the
United New York BRC local.

Linda Burnham, from California's Bay Area BRC local also
attended. In the course of deliberations at the meeting, a
separate "Declaration of African Descendants" was produced
(<
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/brc-discuss/message/1907>
or
<
http://mail-archive.com/brc-discuss@lists.tao.ca/msg00946.html>),

as well as a declaration of "Principles/Commitments on Race
and Poverty" by an NGO Roundtable on Race and Poverty
(<
http://www.hri.ca/racism/Submitted/Author/racepovworking.htm>
or
<
http://www.udayton.edu/~race/06internat/hrights/PrepCom09.htm>),

sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Group. The Black
Radical Congress endorses both documents in their entirety.

African-descended peoples and indigenous Native peoples
fought hard to ensure that the draft document from the
Americas would include sections devoted specifically to
their experiences. And African-descended peoples, in
particular, fought for the draft to clearly endorse the
concept of reparations as an appropriate remedy for the
ravages of slavery and colonial domination we have endured.
It is noteworthy that the U.S. government delegation was the
principal opponent of both objectives: including a separate
section on people of African descent, and endorsement of
reparations -- which the delegation claimed had been paid in
the U.S., in effect, by the implementation of affirmative
action policies! But despite its obstructive role, the U.S.
delegation was overruled. In the end, satisfactory,
inclusive language was agreed upon -- satisfactory, within
the constraints imposed by UN procedures -- for releasing a
"Regional Conference of the Americas Draft Declaration and
Plan of Action." The special committee then went to work on
the merger of all regional drafts into one draft document,
which was unveiled in Geneva in March.

The result of the special committee's work, completed two
weeks after the Santiago meeting, was greeted with outrage
in Geneva. Virtually all of the language hard fought-for in
Santiago was nowhere to be found in the merged document, and
although a separate section on indigenous Native peoples was
included, there was no African descent section and no
reference to reparations. Indeed, in the 31-page draft, the
words "people of African descent" appeared only twice. NGO
representatives from other regions, especially Asia, were
similarly dissatisfied, so much so that the decision was
made to reject the draft declaration and require the writing
committee to produce a re-draft -- a new merged draft
declaration. In order for the special writing committee to
present the new draft for discussion, an extra
pre-conference meeting took place in Geneva on May 7 to 11.
A final and extremely important pre-conference event will
take place in Geneva at the end of May.

Overture to Durban: The Struggle in Geneva

In many ways, the final pre-conference meeting has an
importance almost equal to that of the conference itself.
This is the gathering at which will be determined the main
structure and language of the declaration that the WCAR will
release at the end of its proceedings in Durban.

Consistent with the collective will of the African diaspora,
the Black Radical Congress will work in Geneva to ensure
that the essence of the document crafted at the meeting of
the Americas in Santiago, over the U.S. delegation's
objections, is reflected in the final draft declaration of
the WCAR.

We will insist on the international community's formal
recognition of the fact that for centuries, up to and
including the present, peoples of African descent have
experienced structural and institutional forms of racism and
racial discrimination that have impacted severely on the
material conditions of our lives, and on all aspects of our
humanity. Stemming from the brutal exploitation of our
bodies under slavery and colonialism, Black people
throughout the American hemisphere and in Africa continue to
experience disproportionate rates of poverty, unemployment
and underemployment; excessive incarceration and state
terrorism; inadequate education and health services;
expropriation of our lands, and numerous other
life-threatening economic, political and social
disadvantages.

We will insist that the international community recognize
the different, disproportionate and multiple ways in which
women of African descent are burdened by the legacies of
past abuse -- including combined sexist and racist economic
and social policies, discriminatory cultural and sexual
mores and other forms of discrimination specific to their
female identity.

We will not only defend and promote reparations as a concept
for compensating the unpaid Black labor that literally built
the infrastructures and wealth of most of the developed
modern world. We will also insist on concrete thinking about
the creation of mechanisms designed to support Black
people's contemporary uphill struggle to recover from the
past's devastation.

We will press for acknowledgment of globalized capitalism's
bitter fruit: its de facto new enslavement and
re-enslavement of millions around the world -- including
millions of children -- who must toil long hours for
unlivable wages, with little or no access to adequate health
care, education or hope for a better life; its facilitation
of new forms of racism and discrimination; its threat to the
natural environment, and to the material, social and
spiritual environments of many peoples and their cultures.

We will work with other groups to produce a separate NGO
"Declaration and Program of Action of the World Conference,"
based on a bottom-up people's agenda for waging the fight
against racism, racial discrimination and economic
oppression.

We will press for the United Nations to establish, within
the offices of its High Commission on Human Rights, a
mechanism for conducting research, specifically, on the
racism and discrimination experienced by the
African-descended peoples of the Americas. The research
would be aimed at developing and proposing specific
remedies.

Unfortunately thus far, the U.S. government has refused to
acknowledge that slavery, colonialism and their legacy have
constricted African-descended peoples' development, at the
same time as the economies of certain nation states are
still being oiled by huge profits from the enslavement and
colonial subjugation of millions. This denial of history,
past and present, places the government totally at odds with
the realities of Black people and threatens to
de-legitimatize any claim it might make to represent the
will of African American citizens and other Blacks in the
U.S. Should it prove necessary to expose in a world forum
the failure of the U.S. government to embrace and represent
the interests of ALL of its people, the Black Radical
Congress is prepared to do so.

The NGO Forum

The WCAR is in two parts. An NGO Forum begins just before,
and slightly overlaps with, the second part of the
conference, which is the official governmental part. The
dates of the NGO Forum are August 28 to September 1.

The forum is important for two reasons: First, it is the
main showcase for NGOs' priorities and work, at which
organizations may present papers and conduct workshops, as
well as offer artistic, musical or theatrical presentations.
Exhibition space for graphic displays is also available. All
presentations and exhibitions must be in line with the
themes and objectives of the WCAR. The slogan adopted for
the WCAR is "United to Combat Racism: Equality, Justice,
Dignity." Also adopted were five broad themes, which can be
read at the Forum's web site <
http://www.racism.org.za>.

Submissions and proposals should be forwarded to
<
moshe@wcar.sangoco.org.za>.
The program of the NGO Forum
will appear on its web site as it takes shape.

Second, the forum provides a valuable opportunity for NGO
representatives from all over the world to network, exchange
information, and establish contacts and mechanisms for
coordinating various aspects of their future work. Indeed,
lifelong friendships and working relationships can spring
from the Forum's intense social interactions, causing many
past participants to observe that the Forum is "where the
action is." It is also true that what happens at the Forum
-- the discussions and debates, the alliances formed, the
resolutions passed -- can significantly influence the
behavior of government delegations in the official section
of the conference.

Support the WCAR

The Black Radical Congress urges all U.S. organizations
devoted to the interests and needs of people of color and
immigrants to actively support the WCAR. That means:
Mobilize.

* If your organization is able to send representatives to
the conference, apply immediately for accreditation (see the
resource list at the end of this statement).

* Use the resources listed at the end of this statement to
gain updated information about the WCAR, and use that
information to reach out to your immediate constituents and
beyond -- grass roots organizations, the faith community, etc.

* Use your organization's web site as a means of passing
along information.

* Use your contacts, both within and outside government,
to put pressure on the U.S. government: Demand that its
emissaries to the WCAR respect Black people and our concerns.

Finally, since not all organizations who wish to be
represented at the WCAR will be able to send people to
Durban, a significant way to support the conference is to
coalesce with other NGOs on planning related events in the
U.S. (the networks and contacts you build in that process
will have long-term usefulness). An excellent focus option
for support work on the local level is the International Day
of Action Against Racism, which has been proposed for August
31, 2001. Stay tuned to BRC online sources, and other online
resources, for details on this proposed worldwide action.

Beyond the WCAR: Imperatives for Justice

The World Conference Against Racism is occurring as dawn
still breaks on the 21st Century, in a world rife with new
forms of exploitation, wealth concentration and deadly
intra-group strife. Since birth, the United Nations has been
severely limited by many factors in its ability to prevent
or successfully mediate conflicts among nations and peoples,
and in its ability to protect groups from inhumane,
discriminatory and intolerant treatment. Not least of those
limitations has been its subservience to the domestic and
geopolitical concerns of its principal benefactors, the
governments of the developed capitalist nations.

Notwithstanding its limitations, the UN has real value, uses
and potential. The world is a better place for the advances
in international human rights law that the UN's existence
has facilitated, including the Race Convention and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights. And we have previously cited the value of the forum
it provides.

But if the big question is who will the UN serve in this new
century, the earliest sign of an answer is not encouraging:
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has initiated a "Global
Compact," whereby UN agencies are urged to "partner" with
the corporation of their choice from a list of 50 entities
that includes Shell, Nike and Novartis. Shell is well known
for environmental destruction and complicity in human rights
abuses, such as Nigeria's execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Nike
is known for sweatshops, and Novartis is working overtime to
force-feed consumers genetically-engineered foods. We salute
those human rights, labor rights and environmental justice
activists who are focusing their work on the goal of a
corporate-free UN and democratic control over corporations.

Confronted with the UN's choice, at this stage, not to have
its initiatives reflect the spirit of the Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but instead to have
them interface with the Covenant's antithesis -- the agenda
of globalized corporate capitalism -- alerts us, again, to
the work remaining to be done in the street. Accordingly,
the Black Radical Congress will continue, as part of a
broad-based collective, to pursue a number of important
goals that are essential to justice, worldwide.

First, the Black Radical Congress seeks the cancellation of
African debt, and of all debt incurred by underdeveloped
nations due to the oppressive policies of European and North
American-controlled lending agencies. In the case of Africa,
debt cancellation is a critical first step toward
compensating African peoples for the ruinous exploitation
and pillage of their continent that, over centuries, are
wholly implicated in reducing them to the status of debtors.

As a related action, we advocate the establishment of an
international reparations agency, with branches in selected
nations. This agency would administer the dispensation of
funds -- provided by the European and North American powers
-- for the development of African-descended peoples in
Africa and throughout the American hemisphere. These funds
would be earmarked to bolster development in the areas of
child and adult education, women's development, health care,
mental health, AIDS prevention, literacy, housing, legal
services, art and cultural institutions, land reclamation
and environmental clean-up and maintenance, among other
possible areas.

We will continue our active role in putting international
pressure on governments, in Southern Africa and elsewhere,
to cease state persecution of gay and lesbian people and
replace that persecution with policies and laws protective
of same gender loving people's human and civil rights.

In the United States, we will continue our role in demanding
that government repair the gaping holes torn in the welfare
safety net by "reform" policies that, disproportionately,
worsen the impoverishment of Black women -- who are
extraordinarily over-represented in urban homeless
populations.

We seek immediate abolition of the death penalty, which is
yet another aspect of the living legacy of slavery.

We will press forward and intensify our national campaign
to: criminalize police brutality under federal law; limit
incarceration to violent criminals and establish
rehabilitative alternatives for non-violent criminals; shift
public funds from expansion of the prison-industrial complex
to complete refurbishment of the nation's public school
system, and to resist efforts to privatize our public
schools.

As we write, an uneasy and deceptive calm is settling upon
the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, where in the past few weeks
our brothers and sisters rose up in righteous anger over
the police murder of Timothy Thomas. Nineteen-years-old and
unarmed, Thomas became the 16th Black male gunned down by
the Cincinnati police since 1995. Long-standing grievances
between the Black population and the governing structures of
that city mirror the state of relations that prevail in most
U.S. cities between people of color and the authorities.
Only the names, and the faces and the incidental details
differ. We know that in all the "theaters" of U.S. urban
struggle, uprisings eventually subside and calm returns.
What the various powers-that-be seem not to understand is:
Until there is true justice, there will be no real peace.

In times like these, it may appear that the United Nations
and its conferences are entirely irrelevant to the long-term
process of uprising, struggle, sacrifice, advocacy,
political negotiation and will that is necessary to remedy
such grave human rights violations as exist in Cincinnati.
But in fact, bearing witness before a small and getting
smaller world is part of the process. Let all of us who can,
go to Durban. We must tell the world what we have seen, what
we know, and how we are determined to win the fight for
change.

--

RESOURCES

Accreditation

Your organization may apply for accreditation to participate
in all proceedings of the World Conference Against Racism by
obtaining an application from:

Sandra Aragon-Parriaux
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations, Room PW-RS 181
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
saragon.hchr@unog.ch

Web Sites

United Nations (UN)
http://www.un.org/WCAR/

United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR)
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/racism/

World Conference Against Racism NGO Forum (WCAR NGO)
http://www.racism.org.za

Human Rights Internet (HRI)
http://www.hri.ca/racism/

Internet Centre Anti-Racism Europe (ICARE)
http://www.icare.to/worldcon.html

AntiRacismNet (Project Change and IGC)
http://www.ngoworldconference.org

Applied Research Center (ARC)
http://www.arc.org/trji/

South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO)
http://www.sangoco.org.za/wcar/

International Possibilities Unlimited (IPU)
http://www.ipunlimited.org/WCAR/wcar.html

International Human Rights Law Group (IHRLG)
http://www.hrlawgroup.org/notflashed.html

Global Afro-Latino and Caribbean Initiative (GALCI)
http://www.caribectr.org/GALCI.html

Black Radical Congress (BRC)
http://www.blackradicalcongress.org

CERD Information

United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD)
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/cerd.htm

United States report to the United Nations Committee on
the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/cerd_report/cerd_index.html

A response to the United States CERD report
http://www.arc.org/downloads/trji010417.pdf

Other Information:

Declaration of African Descendants
Preparatory Meeting for the Americas
December 5-7, 2000
Santiago, Chile
http://www.udayton.edu/~race/06internat/afrodesc00.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/brc-discuss/message/1907
http://mail-archive.com/brc-discuss@lists.tao.ca/msg00946.html

Principles/Commitments on Race and Poverty
NGO Roundtable on Race and Poverty
Preparatory Meeting for the Americas
December 3-7, 2000
Santiago, Chile
http://www.ngoworldconference.org/ngocc_attach1.htm#6
http://www.hri.ca/racism/Submitted/Author/racepovworking.htm
http://www.udayton.edu/~race/06internat/hrights/PrepCom09.htm

Upcoming Events

May 21-June 1, 2001
Second PrepCom for WCAR
Geneva, Switzerland

August 28-September 1, 2001
NGO Forum
Durban, South Africa

August 31, 2001
International Day of Action Against Racism
Durban, South Africa

August 31-September 7, 2001
World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
Durban, South Africa

Conference Slogan

"United to Combat Racism: Equality, Justice, Dignity"

Conference Themes

1. Sources, causes, forms and contemporary manifestations of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance.

2. Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and
related intolerance.

3. Measures of prevention, education and protection aimed at
the eradication of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia
and related intolerance at national, regional and
international levels.

4. Provision of effective remedies, recourse, redress and
other [compensatory] measures, at national, regional and
international levels.

5. Strategies to achieve full and effective equality,
including international co-operation and enhancement of the
UN and other international mechanisms in combating racism,
racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,
including follow-up procedures.

*The word "compensatory" in theme #4 is in square brackets
because there was no general agreement for including the
term.

Stated Conference Objectives

* To review progress made in the fight against racism,
racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

* To consider ways and means to ensure the application of
existing standards and the implementation of existing
instruments to combat racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance.

* To increase the level of awareness about the scourge of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance.

* To formulate recommendations on ways to increase the
effectiveness of activities and mechanisms of the United
Nations through programmes aimed at combating racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

* To review the political, historical, economic, social,
cultural and other related factors leading to racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

* To draw up concrete recommendations for ensuring that the
United Nations has the financial and other necessary
resources for its actions to combat racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

-30-

NOTE: When responding or sending us feedback about
this statement, please indicate whether we have your
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of a broader discussion and debate. Thank you.

Black Radical Congress
National Office
Columbia University Station
P.O. Box 250791
New York, NY 10025-1509
Phone: (212) 969-0348
Email:
blackradicals@yahoo.com
Web:
http://www.blackradicalcongress.org

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