Racism summit should look to the future

LONDON: The United Nations summit on racism now underway in Durban, properly entitled the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, was always an ambitious project. In an imperative, moral sense, its stated aims are both bold and noble.

In attempting to forge "new tools" to combat racism in all its manifestations, the meeting "has the potential to shape and embody the spirit of the new century based on the shared conviction that we are all members of one human family", says Mary Robinson, the UN's human rights tsar. But in a more mundane, pragmatic sense, Robinson's hope that it will be "a conference of actions, not just words" looks to be in serious danger of being confounded by the complexities and confusions of its sweeping, self-appointed task.

Is the summit, in fact, about racism or slavery, about 19th- century European and U.S. colonialism or present-day African good governance, about pecuniary compensation and concrete reparation or symbolic apologies, about globalization or development aid, about the past or the future?

The answer appears to depend on which delegate has the floor at any given moment. The effective failure to define terms and set tangible objectives (despite a series of preparatory conferences) makes this the sort of exercise that could be easily written off and soon forgotten. But by raising such fundamental issues, pushing them up the agenda, forcing the debate, and giving an international platform to those whose voices rarely carry far, the UN does the global community a service and creates an opportunity that its responsible members would do well not to abuse.

Making the most of this unique occasion means not exacerbating its inherent confusions by, for example, opportunistically singling out Israel for particular criticism over Palestine and not, say, China (over Tibet) or Russia (over Chechnya) or Zimbabwe (over Matabeleland) -- all of which conflicts have racial undertones. It means not exploiting the event to appeal to a narrow, domestic ethnic constituency, as has been the case with Jesse Jackson and members of the U.S. Congress's African-American caucus. And it means not allowing the horrific but basically historical injustices of yesteryear to divide and undermine consensus and thus obscure and deny the pressing needs of tomorrow's world.

To their credit, senior African leaders such as South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni have largely moved beyond the calls for abject apologies and reparations for the slave trade. Whatever formula for saying sorry is ultimately inserted in the conference's final communique, what really matters to them is increased aid, assistance, debt reduction and investment from the world's wealthier nations. A vehicle for such help (call it restitution if you prefer) already exists in the New African Initiative. And if properly funded and managed, it promises the prize of reduced poverty and disease, increased educational opportunity and economic self-sufficiency, and a prospective end to the misrule and conflicts that hinder Africa's efforts to escape from colonial despoliation.

This conference is not only about Africa, of course, nor simply about black and white. Racism is a universal affliction; it lurks within us all, and has many faces (as the English and Germans reminded each other at the weekend). If this UN summit helps by raising individual consciousness, as well as by stirring collective conscience, it will have been well worth all the trouble.

-- Guardian News Service