The Durban Review Conference
In 2001, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF) and more than 10,000 people from regions all over the world convened in Durban, South Africa to participate in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR). It was a landmark event in the struggle to improve the lives of millions of human beings around the world who are victims of racial discrimination and intolerance, leading to the adoption by consensus of the ground-breaking Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA). The DDPA encompasses far-reaching measures to tackle racism in all its manifestations, including strengthening education, fighting poverty, securing development, improving the remedies and resources available to victims of racism, and bolstering respect for the rule of law and for human rights – all issues directly related to the work of LCCREF. The DDPA is the most important framework to date for guiding governments, non-governmental organizations and other institutions in their efforts to combat racism and racial discrimination.
Convened in April 2009, the Durban Review Conference served as a follow-up to the WCAR with delegates from more than 100 U.N. member nations coming to Geneva, Switzerland, to review the progress made in combating racism and intolerance. Specifically, it was meant to assess the actual implementation of the DDPA by all stakeholders at the national, regional and international levels since 2001, and to identify concrete measures and initiatives for combating and eliminating all manifestations of these destructive circumstances. Furthermore, the Review Conference provided a critical forum to share best practices among the different entities involved.
After months of contentious negotiations, an agreement was reached on a final resolution outlining how U.N. member states can eradicate racism. The resolution represents a broad consensus on how to tackle racism and related forms of intolerance around the world. Recommendations in the resolution include:
- aggressively investigating hate crimes;
- affirming the right to organize for native-born and migrant workers alike;
- encouraging governments to embrace equal opportunity programs;
- calling for the ratification of other U.N. social justice treaties; and
- establishing independent national human rights bodies that would launch investigations, make policy proposals, and monitor compliance with human rights treaties and domestic law.
Non-governmental organizations are among the stakeholders specifically called upon to help implement the Program of Action agreed at the 2001 WCAR. LCCREF's aim as an NGO participant was to ensure that the Review Conference was a forum for credible discussions on racism and related intolerance and is faithful to the goals established at WCAR in 2001. By attending the Conference in Geneva, LCCREF wanted to establish continuity with the WCAR process and reaffirm our commitment to bridging civil and human rights.
To date, LCCREF has played an important role in all the processes associated with WCAR and the follow-up preparatory meetings for the Durban Review. In October of 2008, LCCREF sent a representative to monitor and report back on the second substantive Durban Review session. At that session, LCCREF joined Human Rights First in issuing a statement urging greater government involvement in combating violent hate crime globally, including racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Roma, and homophobic violence. The statement outlined a set of principles and a 10 point plan for how various governments could effectively achieve this goal. At the Durban Review conference, LCCREF provided a brief intervention that addressed many of these same points.
