UN-backed conference
The 2001 World Conference against Racism (WCAR), also known as Durban I, was held at the Durban International Convention Centre in Durban, South Africa, under UN auspices, from 31 August to 8 September 2001.
The conference covered several controversial issues, including redress for transatlantic slavery and the second-class citizenry issue in Palestine-Israel. The language of the final Declaration and Programme of Action produced by the conference was strongly disputed in these areas, both in the preparatory meetings in the months that preceded the conference and during the conference itself.
Two delegations, the United States and Israel, withdrew from the conference over objections to a draft document equating Zionism with racism. The final Declaration and Programme of Action did not contain the text that the U.S. and Israel had objected to, that text having been voted out by delegates in the days after the U.S. and Israel withdrew.
In parallel to the conference, a separately held NGO Forum also produced a Declaration and Programme of its own, that was not an official Conference document, which contained language relating to Israel that the WCAR had voted to exclude from its Declaration, and which was criticized by then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and many others.
The NGO Forum ended in discord. Mary Robinson lost the support of the United States in her office of High Commissioner, and many of the potential political aftereffects of the conference were annulled by the September 11, 2001 attacks. The attacks took place just three days after the conference ended, entirely eclipsing it in the news, and significantly affecting international relations and politics. The conference was followed by the 2009 Durban II conference in Geneva, which was boycotted by ten Western countries. A commemorative Durban III conference in September 2011 in New York has also drawn significant criticism and was boycotted by 14 Western countries.
Preparations.
The conference was authorized by United Nations General Assembly Resolution #52/111. Prior to the conference various preparatory meetings (PrepComs) were held in order to identify conference themes and to create initial drafts of the Declaration and Programme of Action. These PrepComs encountered difficulties from the start.
The first problem was the question of what the conference theme was to be. The Western European states, along with the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, all wanted the conference objectives to be those given in the authorizing resolution. The Africa Group, the Latin American states, and the Caribbean states wanted the conference objectives to go beyond what was in the resolution, and include items dealing with regional, national, and international measures for compensation for colonialism and slavery.
Prior to the conference, there were also four Regional Conferences, in Strasbourg, Santiago, Dakar, and Tehran.
The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action were adopted by the governmental delegates attending the Conference at the International Convention Centre.
Compensation for colonialism and slavery.
The issue of compensation for colonialism and slavery is addressed in ¶ 13, ¶ 14, ¶ 15, and ¶ 29 of the Declaration. It was one of the most controversial issues debated at the conference, one that had the potential to derail the entire conference. It was dealt with cleverly in the Declaration, containing rhetoric that satisfied the African bloc, without applying retroactively against the descendants of colonizers the principle of crimes against humanity and without establishing a clear responsibility for reparations on the parts of former colonial states.
The wording of the Declaration struck a delicate balance. Whilst acknowledging historical and contemporary practices of slavery and the slave trade as morally outrageous, and something that would be a crime against humanity today, it did not apply that legal principle to an era before the principle actually existed. The Durban Declaration provides that states recognize "that these historical injustices [slavery, colonialism, genocide, apartheid] have undeniably contributed to the poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization, social exclusion, economic disparities, instability and insecurity that affect many people in different parts of the world, in particular in developing countries." (Article 158)
One of the contentious points at the conference related to the issue was that of apartheid. During the preparatory processes of the conference, South Africa stressed that it did not want to link compensation to apartheid. At the Tehran Regional Conference, a paragraph making such a link was inserted by Asian governments. This was deleted at the request of the South African delegation. Linking compensation to apartheid had the potential to polarize South African society, and produce the same effects as had the controversial land reform programmes in Zimbabwe. Domestic political pressures, and the aim of the South African government to foster reconciliation within the country, made South Africa's position difficult.
The issue of compensation was thus a complex one, that was exacerbated by the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, calling campaigns to demand compensation for colonialism and slavery "childish".
The earliest point at which the issue of compensation caused problems was during preparations in May 2001, when delegations came to the decision of where to place it on the agenda. At the time, the fourth item on the agenda, out of five items, was "Provision of effective remedies, recourses, redress, compensatory, and other measures, at the national, regional, and international levels". The European Union, represented by Portugal, wanted to place the entire language in brackets. The United States just wanted to place the word "compensatory" in brackets. The African Group, Armenia, and Cuba strongly objected to both proposals, with the African Group stating that if the topic were placed in brackets, they would move for the entire text to be placed in brackets also. In the end, the U.S. proposal was adopted, with the addition of a statement in the report indicating the different perspectives on the exact meaning of those brackets. Western European states discussed informally amongst themselves, outside of the formal preparatory proceedings, what measures and levels of non-cöoperation they might adopt if the issue of compensation gained momentum at Durban itself.
Before the conference, the debate over compensation was seen as dealing with the transatlantic slave trade, and the colonization of Africa by Europeans, thus pitting Western European states (including the former colonial powers of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom) and the United States against the African Group. The African Group was supported by Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Prior to the conference, on 3 August 2001, the African Group circulated a Non-Paper on the "Injustices of the Past", containing strong language but a generally moderate position. To this paper the E.U. responded, on 8 August 2001, with a Non-Paper of its own that addressed most but not all, of the issues in the African Group's paper. The United States circulated a Non-Paper as well, but this turned out to be less helpful than the E.U. one.
The African Group circulated a second Non-Paper on 3 September 2001 that was substantially stronger than its earlier one, with language shifts from "debt cancellation" to "immediate and unconditional cancellation of debt", emphasis upon crimes against humanity, and calls for reparation (something that the earlier paper had not included in part because of a U.S. demand, made at a preparatory meeting in Geneva, that such language be excluded from the text).
Several members of the African Group openly opposed calling for reparations. President Wade stated "We still suffer the effects of slavery and colonialism, and that cannot be evaluated in monetary terms. I find that not only absurd, but insulting." Similarly, South Africa was more interested in devoting time and effort to more pragmatic ends, such as Western aid for the Millennium Africa Recovery Programme, which would be more palatable to the U.S. and the E.U.
A consensus on the reparations issue was reached by late August 2001. On 24 August, President of the United States George W. Bush announced in a press conference that "the reparations issue has been solved — at least the last information I had was that the issue has … looks like it has been resolved", albeit that news media at the time failed to realize the significance of the comment. The U.S. walked out of the conference a few weeks later.
Zionism.
Draft text prior to the conference.
During preparatory meetings in Geneva, text that linked Zionism to racism was placed in brackets, with the expectation that it would be replaced by text that referred to violations of the rights of Palestinians. The U.S. had already threatened to boycott the conference should the conference draft documents include text that could be in any way interpreted as linking Zionism to racism. Mary Robinson had also said that regional political conflicts should not be imposed upon the agenda of the conference. The Australian, the Canadian, and some European delegations shared the U.S. view.
The Arab position was stated by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa: "Israel's racist actions against the Palestinian people have to be dealt with in an international conference that aims to eradicate racism. Arab countries are not expecting the Durban conference to be a venue for dealing with the Arab- Israeli peace process, but they certainly expect that the Israeli racist practices against the Palestinian people will not be overlooked."
The Arab delegates were not insistent upon language that specifically equated Zionism with racism. It had been suggested that they were trying to revive United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 (issued 1975, annulled 1991) which stated that "Zionism is a form of racism.". Their position was that they were, rather, trying to underline that the actions being committed by Israel against Palestinians were racist.
This stance was in part influenced by the U.S. threat of boycott, which would have made it impractical to insist upon harsh language condemning Israel or equating the suffering of the Palestinians with that of Holocaust victims. According to one Arab diplomat, no Arab state except for Syria had insisted upon any language linking Israel to racist practices.
At the start of the Geneva meeting, the text had been presented that comprised six bracketed paragraphs dealing with "Zionist racist practices", including an appeal for Israel "to revise its legislation based on racial or religious discrimination such as the law of return and all the policies of an occupying power which prevent the Palestinian refugees and displaced persons from returning to their homes and properties", and a suggestion for the need "to bring the foreign occupation of Jerusalem by Israel together with all its racist practices to an end".
By the end of the meeting, all of this text had either been removed or toned down. One such phrase removed was a mention of "holocausts" suffered by other peoples, which had been seen as an affront to the memory of the Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust. South African diplomats had already told Arab and Muslim countries that they would have to offer text that could describe the current situation without using such language as "ethnic cleansing practices against Palestinians".
Nonetheless, the United States, objecting to the remaining text, decided to send a low-level delegation, headed by Ambassador Michael Southwick, to the Conference, rather than have United States Secretary of State Colin Powell attend himself. German officials criticized this decision, and the United States Congressional Black Caucus urged him to attend. The Anti-Defamation League urged him to stay away.
Withdrawal by U.S. and Israel.
On 3 September 2001, after four days of deadlocked negotiations that did not reach agreement on language, the United States and Israeli delegations withdrew from the conference. Both United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel Shimon Peres stated that this was done with regret.
The low-level U.S. delegation had kept a low profile throughout conference proceedings until that point, with delegates working quietly in sub-committee meetings, without (unlike in earlier conferences) giving news briefings or off the record statements to journalists, to change the text of the draft declaration, to make it less forceful and less specific against Israel, and to bring it into line with U.S. foreign policy goals with respect to the International Criminal Court (see United States and the International Criminal Court) by removing language that strengthened the ICC.
The draft documents had stated "deep concern" at the "increase of racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism" and talked of the emergence of "movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority". Alternative proposals, which