HEADQUARTERS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON CONTEMPORARY RACISM

HEADQUARTERS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON CONTEMPORARY RACISM

Laws alone would not effectively combat racism, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, Doudou Diene, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this morning.  In addition to international legal instruments, it was important that the ethical and cultural bases of such behaviour be tackled for desired results to be gained.

Mr. Diene pointed out that despite the existence of international legal instruments, racism was still on the rise.  It was growing in importance all around the world.  Legal instruments were, therefore, not enough.

There was, he acknowledged, a problem of implementation of international commitments to combat racism.  To do what was necessary to ensure their implementation, he would be guided by the Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa.

Throughout the briefing, Mr. Diene returned constantly to the theme of racism’s ethical content.  He stressed that racism did not just come out of the cosmos, but had its roots in cultures and civilizations, at the back of which were people.  Man, he agreed, was the medicine of man.  Because of that reality, he placed the attitudes and practices of people at the heart of the problem.

The “archaeology of racism” attested to the accuracy of that perspective, he explained.  Historically, when groups encountered each other, they reacted with hostility to those who were different from themselves, those they regarded as “evil”.  Values born of cultures were the shaping factors in such responses.  As a result, his concern had been to discover how and why cultures gave birth to racism.  That, in his mind, would be the most fruitful approach to dealing with the phenomenon.

He intended to use a two-pronged approach to combating the problem, he said.  First, he would promote and strengthen the legal aspects of the struggle against racism, namely, the implementation of all international legal instruments.  To that end, he would be providing support to the work being done by the Human Rights Commission and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The second prong of his approach, he said, would be intellectual.  It called for deep reflection on the root causes of discrimination, racism and intolerance.  He listed critical questions that had to be asked in relation to the persistence of racism.  “What are the deepest-lying cultural structures framing the foreigner or the person who is different in a negative or positive way?  What role has history played in the way different cultures have been portrayed?  What is the key role of cultural value systems in generating and strengthening racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia?”

Despite his insistence on the historical roots of racism, Mr. Diene made it clear that racism was a contemporary problem.  He noted that, as a consequence of the 11 September 2001 attack, certain specific groups had been targeted as being

responsible.  Thus, while old forms of racism still continued to impact societies everywhere, new and more subtle forms of racism had emerged.  As an example, he pointed to the current fashionable belief that some societies were incapable of development because they lacked appropriate values.

He said part of the antidote to the problem was the promotion of pluralism.  Governments had to encourage intercultural education so that people would learn to embrace differences, instead of remaining locked within a “ghetto mentality” about their identity.  But that ghetto mentality locked out others.  Yet, true identity resulted from encounter, interaction and change.  There had to be recognition and respect for differences, he said.

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