20 April 2009 | 09-0309 |

Peter Kenny

Navi Pillay and Ban Ki-moon at U.N. in Geneva. Photo: © Peter Kenny / ENI

Geneva (ENI). Race, religion and politics are all high octane factors around the United Nation's Durban Review Conference on racism, which began in Geneva on 20 April with some nations staying away in protest that the gathering is harmful to religious tolerance.

Diplomats from 23 nations, including Britain and France, walked out of the U.N.'s Palais des Nations in Geneva during a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he accused Israel of being "a totally racist government".

Protesters heckled Ahmadinejad after he branded Israel a "cruel and oppressive racist regime". The Iranian president spoke as the only head of state that accepted an invitation to attend the conference held in the Swiss city.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, criticised Ahmadinejad in comments after his speech when he said, "I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve. This makes it significantly more difficult to build constructive solutions to the very real problem of racism."

The conference had faced controversy because of demands by some Islamic nations that it should address "religious defamation" which some Western countries say is an infringement of free speech.

The 20 to 24 April meeting in Geneva is to review progress towards the goals set at a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands joined a boycott of the Geneva conference led by the United States and Israel. France and Britain said they would attend the meeting, but noted they would leave if offensive language was used at the podium.

The Vatican, however, said it would attend the meeting. Monsignor Celestino Migliore, the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations said on 20 April, "In general, the Holy See prefers to face problems occupying its chair and not by abandoning it and leaving it empty."

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking near Rome at Castel Gandolfo, referred the previous day to the U.N. conference saying, "This is an important initiative … because still today, despite the lessons of history, these deplorable phenomena continue."

The Pope recalled that "the Durban Declaration recognises that all peoples and individuals constitute one human family, rich in diversity," and that, "the preservation and promotion of tolerance, pluralism and respect for diversity can produce more inclusive societies."

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, speaking before Ahmadinejad's speech, said "we will not tolerate any blunder or provocation" from the Iranian president, who had before the meeting referred to the Holocaust as a myth and called for Israel to be "wiped off the pages of history".

Opening the conference U.N. Secretary-General Ban said, "Despite decades of advocacy, despite the efforts of many groups and many nations, despite ample evidence of racism’s terrible toll - racism still persists. No society is immune - large or small, rich or poor."

Ban said he was "profoundly disappointed" that some Western nations were boycotting the conference that will review progress and assess implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action in racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African lawyer Navi Pillay had said the day before the conference opened, "I am shocked and deeply disappointed by the United States decision not to attend a conference that aims to combat racism, xenophobia, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance worldwide."

She added, "A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance … These are truly global issues, and it is essential that they are discussed at a global level, however sensitive and difficult they may be."

Speaking to journalists on 17 April Pillay had said that commitments made by governments in 2001 in Durban "were forceful and ground-breaking, but there is still much to be done in implementing them".

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz editorialised on 20 April, "The United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva, known as Durban II, this year falls on the same day as both Hitler's birthday and Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day, due to the intricacies of the Hebrew calendar."

The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch said in a statement released in Munich on 20 April, "It is a courageous act on the part of the federal government [of Germany] to cancel their participation to the Conference on Racism and thus set an example against racism and anti-Semitism. Far too often countries like Iran, Libya and Cuba were allowed to use the platform of the United Nations for their own anti-democratic politics."

Despite the divisions around the conference many non governmental organizations and civil society groups, some of which are excluded from the conference such as low-caste Dalits, or untouchables from south Asia, are making use of the U.N. arena to highlight discriminatory practices.

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