If nothing else, the United Nations conference on racism has highlighted how far the world is from attaining the elusive ideal of the brotherhood of humankind.
It has been paralaysed by the very ethnic, racial and national divisions it set out to try to address.
As we went to press, it was still unclear whether a meaningful final declaration and plan of action could be adopted by delegates. A much-hardened African position on slavery and colonialism, including a demand for individual apologies from former colonial powers and the recognition of the slave trade as a crime against humanity, drew an equally hard-line response from the Europeans. Frantic attempts were being made to moderate the stance of Arab states on Israel, by removing any equation of Zionism and racism and focusing instead on the plight of the Palestinians. South Africa’s conference agenda was in the balance and faced serious compromise. The government hoped for two principal outcomes: world recognition of Africa’s special place in the history of racial persecution, and a forward-looking commitment from the developed world to the continent’s economic resurgence. As they can have no force in international law, any declaration and plan of action from the conference can influence the way individual states and the international community behave only by building a global consensus on racism.
Moral authority
Deadlock on the central issues, and in particular the dissent of key world actors like the United States and Europe, threatened to strip the conference of moral authority. It also seemed likely to deprive the South Africans of an opportunity to apply focused pressure for a more equitable world economic regime. It promised to take the heat off countries many of them in the Third World where ethnic or racial intolerance are institutionalised or widespread. If Turkey and Iraq wish to continue suppressing Kurdish nationalism, or China maintain its imperialist hold on Tibet, they need only point to the West’s failure to acknowledge or offer redress for its historical crimes.
An inherent weakness of the conference was that national political priorities and the imperatives of geopolitics continued as an intrusive background, in much the same way as party political agendas constantly disrupted South Africa’s truth commission. Radical Arab states used the conference to bring pressure to bear on the Israelis. The Zimbabweans used it to deflect world attention from their own systematic human rights abuses and to embarrass Britain. Europe and the US used it to shield themselves from the threat of individual reparations claims. The American black congressional caucus pushed Nigeria and other African delegations into a more militant posture to strengthen its push for slavery reparations in the US.
The overwhelming dominance of Middle East politics and the slavery issue forced into the background the many lesser but just causes interest groups had hoped the conference would put under the spotlight.
Issues such as xenophobia and minority rights were sidelined. More importantly, the Middle East and slavery muffled a crucial debate on the role of ethnic conflict in retarding economic growth and the development of democratic institutions in Africa, a central theme of the Millennium Africa Plan. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan repeatedly called for a conference that addressed racism as a world problem. At least in its public profile, this did not happen.
Divisions
The potential impact of the conference is much diminished, and in some respects the meeting may have deepened divisions and driven certain governments into a more intransigent mindset.
The insistence on equating Zionism and racism served to cloud a political problem which requires a political solution, and might have left the Israeli government more defiant, more insecure and less amenable to reason. The importance of reaching firm agreements in pre-conference talks, and sticking to them, was underscored. The hard-line African states put South Africa in a very difficult position, and undermined its advocacy of Third World interests by retreating from the compromise position on slavery forged in Dakar earlier this year. The major point is that potentially explosive gatherings of this kind cannot be used as negotiating forums.
But that is not the same as saying it has been a complete waste of time. The conference must be seen in a broader perspective as part of a long-term campaign to put the Third World and its needs on the international map and impress on the rich countries of the north their obligations. The US may have formally ducked the issues by allowing a lowly consular official to represent it, but it must have been struck by the intensity of African sentiment on slavery and colonial rule. Europe must also have been impressed by the depth of resentment among its former colonial subjects.
The conference has justified itself by vividly highlighting the mountainous problems posed by racial intolerance in our world. Whether immediate progress has been made in tackling it is a moot point. But it has driven home the crying need for action.