Review of World Conference Against Racism

“Any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court (United Nations) and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.

“So those of us whose political, and economic and social philosophy is Black Nationalism have become involved in the civil rights struggle. We have injected ourselves into the civil rights struggle, and we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you’re fighting on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court.”

—Malcolm X

By Roger Wareham

Roger Wareham WW photo: Anne Pruden

Attention All African People!!! The U.N. has agreed to hold a review of the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism held in South Africa. On April 21st, a Preparatory Committee meeting for this review will be held. You need to be there. To understand why this Durban review is important to all Black people and our struggle for reparations, some background is necessary.

In the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 2001, in Durban, South Africa, African people achieved an historic victory.

The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) adopted a Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) recognizing that the “Trans-Atlantic slavery and slave trade was a crime against humanity.” The first international acknowledgment of an historical truth was the result of a nearly decade-long battle waged by the December 12th Movement International Secretariat and a few other NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to maintain racism as a human rights issue within the U.N.

Following the release of Nelson Mandela from 26 years of prison in apartheid South Africa, the Western countries, fearing that the spotlight would be turned on their own racist foundations and practices, fought to have racism eliminated as an item from the agenda of the Commission on Human Rights.

Since 1989, the December 12th Movement, an organization which arose from the grassroots Black community’s struggle to defend our human rights, had been carrying out Malcolm’s mandate to bring our situation to the international community by regular participation at the U.N. human rights bodies in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York City. In 1993, at the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, we called for the U.N. to convene a World Conference Against Racism. But it was not until December 1997 that the U.N. General Assembly agreed to do so in 2001.

After the General Assembly approved the conference, D12 outlined what we saw as three key issues to its success: 1) a declaration that the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery and colonialism were crimes against humanity; 2) acknowledgment of the economic basis of racism; 3) reparations for the victims. Over the next four years D12 successfully helped organize NGOs of African people from around the Diaspora who planned to participate in the WCAR to put these issues at the top of their list of demands.

At the same time, understanding that it was the member countries of the U.N. who would actually pass a Declaration and Program of Action, we lobbied the U.N. Regional Groupings, particularly the African Group of countries, to support these demands. The African Group’s statement, the Dakar Declaration, addressed all the issues. From the beginning, the Western European and Other (WEO) Group of countries, which includes the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, recognized the threat these issues posed to the maintenance of white supremacy and their dominant role in the world.

WEO launched a campaign of manipulation, bureaucracy, threats and economic intimidation to force the rest of the world to back off these issues. D12, along with the National Black United Front (NBUF), organized a 400-member delegation, “The Durban 400,” to attend the WCAR. Our focus was not on the NGO Forum, which was running parallel to the WCAR, but on the conference of states.

The Durban 400 lobbied relentlessly, making it clear to every country there the importance of the three issues. African Diaspora NGOs from around the world pushed their countries as well. This grassroots organizing effort helped counter the Western onslaught on the developing countries which represent the majority of the world. The U.S. delegation, seeing that their campaign to derail African people’s demands had failed, walked out of the WCAR.

U.N. World Conference Declarations and Action Programs are decided by consensus, not majority vote. So while the developed world didn’t back down on every issue, the final DDPA was a compromise document. The crimes against humanity, excepting colonialism, were recognized. The language speaks to reparations without clearly calling it that. And it alludes to the economic base of racism.

So Durban represented an important victory for African people. However the momentum from that victory was derailed just two days later by the attacks of 9/11. The WEO Group grabbed the “terrorism” concerns arising out of 9/11 as an opportunity to put WCAR, the DDPA and its implications on hold and out of the world’s consciousness.

The Durban Review is our chance to make the demands of African people primary once again. The December 12th Movement and its companion NGO, the International Association Against Torture, just returned from attending a meeting in Geneva of the Working Group on People of African Descent (WGPAD).

The WGPAD was established by the DDPA and is the only U.N. body exclusively concerned with people of African descent. At the meeting, there were only three NGOs present from the entire Americas. We successfully lobbied to have the WGPAD recommend that reparations be an agenda item for the Durban Review. Predictably this was the only WGPAD recommendation which came under attack from the WEO, who were represented by Germany and Belgium. They said its inclusion would threaten the whole review and might force them to pull out. The African Group made it clear that they had learned from their Durban error and insisted that it be in. The WGPAD included it.

The first substantive international Preparatory Meeting for the Durban Review Conference will be held in Geneva from April 21 to May 2. We must be there in force to lobby for and protect our interests. Malcolm is watching.

Roger Wareham is a New York attorney who helped to introduce a class action lawsuit demanding reparations on behalf of African Americans in 2002.