Top UN rights official says new strategies needed to fight racism

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, today said delegates meeting in Durban, South Africa, at the World Conference against Racism should focus on its fundamental aims and devise new strategies to fight the scourge.

"One thing that is clearer to me after the preparations of the past 18 months is how badly we need new strategies to fight racism and intolerance in the modern world," Mrs. Robinson, who is also Secretary-General of the conference, said in her opening remarks. "How much misery, inequality, conflict is caused by racism and discrimination? From a human rights point of view, this Conference is crucially important. Equality and non-discrimination are central to the pursuit of human rights."

Success in Durban should be measured by whether or not the outcome brings effective remedies and relief to the victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mrs. Robinson said.

The conference could also produce a breakthrough in the struggle against racism if agreement could be reached on language that recognizes historic injustices and expresses deep remorse for the crimes of the past, Mrs. Robinson said. "If we can do that, it will connect with millions of people worldwide and affirm their human dignity."

Earlier, the President of the UN General Assembly, Harri Holkeri of Finland, encouraged participants to work hard to make the outcome a landmark for further action against racism.

In his address, Mr. Holkeri said racism and racial discrimination were among the most powerful assaults on human dignity and freedom. "No society can tolerate racism without undermining peace and justice," he said. "And yet, while mass media, international travel and technological progress bring people closer and closer, we are witnessing a resurgence of intolerance, manifestations of xenophobia, racism, racial discrimination and ethnic conflicts across the world."

For his part, as leader of the host country, South African President Thabo Mbeki said the conference "would give us the possibility to pledge to the peoples of the world that we will not betray the friendship and solidarity which drove you to act against apartheid and will therefore join with you in the difficult struggle to eradicate that legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism."

While nobody ever chose to be a slave, to be colonized, to be racially oppressed, the impulses of the time caused these crimes to be committed by human beings against others, President Mbeki said. "Surely, the impulse of our time says that we must do everything we can to free those who to this day suffer from racism, xenophobia and related intolerance because their forebears were enslaved, colonized and racially oppressed."

Officially called the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the forum is set to run through 7 September.