Visibility on the international stage: The ERRC delegation at the World Conference Against Racism

07 November 2001

Morag Goodwin¹

The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) took place between August 31 and September 7, 2001, in Durban, South Africa. The conference called together representatives of the governments of member states of the United Nations and thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), composed of, and representing, victims of racism. The meeting was to produce a declaration of intent with an accompanying plan of action, upon which all governments present would agree, and which all would work together to implement once the conference was over. It was intended that such a high-profile gathering would force the issue of the importance of tackling racism, xenophobia and related intolerance to the top of the international political agenda, providing states with practical steps for action to improve the situation in their country and agreed concrete commitments which NGOs could monitor, in a similar way that the agreements reached at the 1995 Beijing conference had promoted and done so much for women's rights. The WCAR was preceeded by an associated NGO Forum from August 28 to September 1, 2001. The NGO Forum enabled organisations of civil society to meet and share experiences and practical ideas for steps they would like the international community and individual governments to take. The overall outcome of the Forum was to be an NGO declaration and plan of action to be presented to the governments as the voice of the victims of racism, to assist the governments in the drafting of the final documents - providing a unique opportunity for the victims to communicate their claims directly to governments. A Youth Summit took place parallel to the NGO Forum, between August 26 and August 28, 2001, enabling 500 young people from all regions of the globe to come together and discuss the particular ways in which racism and racial discrimination affect children and young people; the Youth Summit was also to produce a declaration and plan of action to be presented to the governmental delegations. The backdrop - a South Africa in transition - was intended to provide inspiration: of our capacity for change, of our ability to tackle racism and win, and of the need to work together to achieve those aims.

Background

The third world conference against racism took place against the background of 50 years of commitment by the international community to combating the evil of racism and racial discrimination. With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the states of the United Nations placed the principle of equal rights at the heart of the new world order; Article 1 of the UDHR declares: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."² The adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 1965 signalled the international community's determination to place the fight against racism, arguably the most powerful and destructive of all inequalities, at the top of the international agenda, a position it has retained, to a greater or lesser extent, ever since. The General Assembly followed the success of the convention with the announcement of a year of action to combat racism and racial discrimination in 1971. The year of action was succeeded by the United Nations first Decade of Action to Combat Racism (1973-1982), with a programme concentrating on a worldwide education campaign. The first World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination took place at the mid-point of the Decade of Action, in Geneva; the resulting Declaration and Programme of Action denounced the self-evident lie of the doctrine of racial superiority and declared racism to be a barrier to friendly relations among peoples. The second World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination was held again in Geneva in 1983, with the aim of reviewing and assessing the successes of the Decade of Action. The accompanying declaration decried the system of mandatory white minority rule in South Africa - "apartheid" - as abhorrent, a crime against humanity and a threat to international peace and security. The vulnerability of groups, such as women, migrant workers and their families, refugees and immigrants was also examined. The delegates in 1983 also called for the establishment of a second Decade of Action. The General Assembly duly announced the Second Decade of Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1983-1992). The second programme concentrated on the elimination of apartheid, as well as on the role of the media in combating racism; measures to ensure the protection of members of minority groups, indigenous peoples, refugees and migrant workers were also an integral part of the action. The Third Decade of Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2004) has encompassed a broadening of the concept of racism to include manifestations of racial discrimination in developing countries and the acknowledgement of the existence of racism in all societies of the world. Other topics, such as the effects of globalisation on racial discrimination, have come up for discussion, as have issues such as ethnic cleansing and genocide - a result of the horrors of the 1990s.

The Durban conference was, in regard to the long-term concern of the international community, just another step along the road. The third conference was planned, however, in the hope that it would succeed in producing agreement across the whole of the international community, where the previous two conferences had failed. It was also hoped that the discussions and debates in Durban would be practically oriented, agreeing on concrete measures and steps to be taken towards the eradication of racism and racial discrimination. The Durban conference was organised in a substantially different manner than its forebears. The heavy involvement of NGOs at every stage of the planning, and the creation of the NGO Forum itself, where victims of racism could come together to draft their own declaration and recommendations, represented a radical departure from the earlier conferences. The decision to divide the world into four regional groupings, for both the governmental and the NGO preparations, ensured that all cultures and perspectives were respected, and was intended to avoid the charge of relativism in the planning of the conference agenda. A series of regional governmental and NGO meetings was held in the two years proceeding the actual conference, to discuss the events planned and to prepare statements detailing the issues of greatest importance in terms of racism and racial discrimination in each region. The regional NGO documents were brought together, as were the regional governmental statements, at further preparatory meetings, to form two sets of declarations of intent and plans of action that could be taken to Durban as the basis for discussion - the governmental drafts and the NGO drafts.

A considerable amount of work had been undertaken by ERRC staff members, and by representatives of other Romani organisations, before the events in Durban got underway. The Romani lobby had been remarkably successful during the preparatory process in ensuring, both at the European governmental meeting and at the European NGO meetings³, that the situation of Roma was at the forefront of discussions and was recognised as being one of the most pressing issues in Europe. Romani issues are specifically dealt with in both resulting documents.

The ERRC, with the generous support of the Ford Foundation, was able to send a delegation of approximately 50 Romani activists from countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe to South Africa. The WCAR represented a unique opportunity for Roma to participate in such a major international event and to take their rightful place on the world stage, and as such the performance of the group was of considerable importance for the nascent Roma rights movement.

Our aims in Durban

The first and foremost aim of the Romani delegation to the WCAR was to raise awareness of the ubiquity of the racial discrimination Roma face. A high degree of public visibility at Durban would ensure that Roma remained at the forefront of the discussions throughout the conference, as they had been in the preparatory process. A strong public profile, it was hoped, would also put pressure on individual governments to acknowledge their country's poor record in dealing with Romani issues and, under the gaze of the world, to commit to solutions. It was decided by the delegation prior to our departure that the goal of awareness-raising would be best achieved by the staging of a day of events at the NGO Forum. "Roma Day" was to be a series of panel discussions on a number of themes of agreed importance to Roma everywhere. The desirability of a march was also articulated and agreed upon, though the exact details of both events were left to be decided on the ground in Durban.

With the goal of awareness-raising, the ERRC produced a special publication for the World Conference, "Roma Rights in Europe", detailing racial discrimination and violence against Roma in Europe. The booklet is a visually powerful combination of photographic essays and first-hand testimony. Several thousand copies of the publication were distributed in Durban to high level UN officials - a copy was placed directly into the hands of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Secretary General of the World Conference Ms Mary Robinson - government officials and delegates and members of the media, as well as to other non-governmental-organisations. The booklet was very successful in providing an easily digestible but comprehensive overview of the problems Roma face in Europe, and was highly praised by journalists and other interest groups. A copy of the booklet is available from the ERRC office by contacting .

As South African President Thabo Mbeki emphasised in his opening address to the NGO Forum, the purpose of the conference was to decide what should be done. Thirty-five years after the adoption of the ICERD, there is a broad international consensus on the evil of racism, the existence of racial discrimination in all societies and the necessity to tackle it. The real issue is how best to achieve the eradication of racism. A vital part of our presence in Durban was to participate in these discussions on how best to move forward together, to criticise the practices of governments, also to provide them with practical, positive suggestions concerning the steps they should take to improve the situation of Roma.

Another important, but controversial, aim of part of the ERRC group was to advance the claim for non-territorial nation status, as set down in the document of the meeting of NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe in Warsaw in October 2000.[4]Many hoped to be able to convince our fellow NGOs of the Romani claim to constitute a nation, and thus maintain the language of nationhood in the NGO final declaration. The presence of Roma as a nation in the final declaration would indicate that governments had acknowledged, if not accepted, the claim. Such an acknowledgement, it is to be hoped, will lead to further discussion and articulation of the concept of a non-territorial nation, and the implications of such status for both governments and the Romani populations they govern.

Other objectives of the delegation included meeting and befriending Romani groups from other parts of the world - as well as representatives of other oppressed groups from around the world - with the aim of initiating future cooperation within the Romani movement to further the Romani cause. The establishment of contacts with non-Romani individuals, members of governmental delegations, members of the international community, as well as with non-Romani groups also suffering under the heavy burden of racial discrimination, was also part of our agenda in Durban - to build coalitions and find common platforms for future action.

Our activities in Durban

The NGO Forum consisted of daily events, of panel discussions and thematic commissions, parallel to the drafting of the final NGO declaration and plan of action. One of the most important events we organised was the planned "Roma Day", which was held on the afternoon of August 29 in the NGO Forum, to coincide with the dedication of the morning discussions to the issue of institutionalised racism. Ms Cervenakova, a young Romani lawyer from the Czech Republic and a former intern with the ERRC, was nominated by the group to represent Roma on one of the morning panel discussions on the theme of institutionalised racism/castism. The panel included a representative from the Dalit delegation (the so-called "untouchables" of India), who spoke forcefully of the need for caste discrimination to be recognised as a form of racial prejudice. However, it was generally accepted that Ms Cervenakova stole the floor, speaking eloquently and convincingly of the violence and manifold problems that Roma face, the root of which is the racism deeply embedded, indeed institutionalised, in our societies. Her tone was also positive, calling upon governments to implement and enforce the international commitments they have undertaken, particularly those under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination⁵.

The Roma thematic commission scheduled for the afternoon was turned into an entire afternoon of panel discussions examining the nature and the depth of the problems facing Roma, drawing on the personal experience and expertise of the members of our delegation, from exclusion in education to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the current situation of Roma in the Macedonia crisis. However, more than just members of our delegation took part; a group of Roma from Latin America added a very welcome intercontinental flavour to the discussions. The events also involved the active participation of groups of Travellers from Scotland and from Ireland, who articulated the problems related to discrimination they face in the British Isles. "Roma Day" was not just talk, however, and involved a celebration of Romani music in the evening, with members of the group performing a number of traditional Romani songs on the international music stage, finishing with the Romani national anthem.

In addition to "Roma Day", the group attended and participated in a wide variety of thematic commissions as individuals, dividing according to interest and expertise so as to ensure that the Romani perspective was heard in as many different fora as possible. Mr Rumyan Russinov was a member of the four-person panel leading the commission on Ethnic Minorities, and placed Roma at the heart of that discussion. Other thematic discussions during the NGO Forum, at which members of the group were present and contributed, concerned hate crime and ethnic cleansing, refugees and asylum issues, environmental racism, political participation, education and legal measures, policies and practices to tackle racism.

The group also held a press conference within the NGO Forum, initiated and led by Rudko Kawcinsky, to highlight for the media and interested members of the NGO community the breaking news that the German government had begun to carry out its threat to expel Roma to Yugoslavia.

In addition, for the duration of the NGO Forum, members of the group took turns manning a stand in the exhibition hall and answering general queries about Roma and the situation of Roma from members of other organisations and interest groups. The stand also contained examples of ERRC publications, and those of other Romani organisations represented by members of the group, which people could take away to read at their leisure. The exhibition hall was a busy place and a stand was a good way to expose a large number of people to the situation of Roma and their vision of the future.

However, the most important aspect of the Forum was the process of drafting a short text on Roma, Sinti and Travellers to forward to the NGO drafting committee for inclusion in the declaration and plan of action. As expected, the process of agreeing on a text that embodied the concerns of all, and on which everyone could agree, was not easy and did not in fact take place until a number of days after the Roma Commission session. Not all members of the delegation accepted the final text, and the controversial text was further altered by the NGO Forum Drafting Committee. Nevertheless, this was the text which was presented to the governmental delegations. Ultimately, the ERRC chose to distance itself from the final NGO declaration and plan of action, and it joined an initiative and signed a joint statement by the Eastern and Central Europe NGO Caucus and other NGOs at the World Conference⁶.

The governmental conference (WCAR) began as the NGO Forum was ending and had none of the festival atmosphere of the Forum. Places for NGO representatives in the governmental section were strictly limited in the first few days, so that only two members of the group could actually enter the arena where the governments were meeting. This was obviously a serious limiting factor upon the activities of the group, as we had to decide to whom the passes should be allocated on a needs-only basis. However, a relaxing of the rules as the conference progressed meant that a large number of special passes were made available on a first-come-first-serve basis early each morning, thus enabling everyone to see the workings of governmental negotiations. However, many of the most interesting aspects of the negotiations were nevertheless conducted behind closed doors, making it that much harder to contact governmental delegations to press our case.

Nevertheless, the group had a number of successful meetings within our caucus sessions. On September 3, 2001, the Czech governmental delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, attended our meeting to talk, to listen, to answer questions and to take part in a general discussion on Roma in Europe. Mr Kavan began by stating that Roma in the Czech Republic do not face persecution but acknowledged that, on the regional and local level, people of Romani ethnicity face racism and intolerance; he expressed his deep regret for the actions of skinheads against Roma in recent years in the Czech Republic (for details of attacks by non-State actors in the Czech Republic, see http://errc.org/publications/indices/czechrepublic.shtml). Mr Kavan recognised that, while the legislation is in place prohibiting the violent actions of skinheads, "many members of the police force are reluctant to implement legislation in force," stating in conclusion that "the police could do a better job." The Czech delegation additionally admitted the de facto existence of racial segregation in the Czech school system and the over-representation of Romani children in schools for the mentally handicapped. However, Mr Kavan denied that the Czech government was in violation of its commitments under Article 3 of ICERD, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid, as he alleged that the practice is not carried out along racial lines, but is a result of the language difficulties Romani children face when they start school⁷. Mr Kavan also denied that the recent immigration checks by British immigration officers at Prague airport were discriminatory against Roma, stating that, as 97 percent of Czech asylum-seekers in Britain were of Romani origin, it was understandable that British immigration officers would single out Roma for additional questioning⁸. At the request of the delegation, Mr Kavan agreed to act as the voice of Roma within the governmental discussions, particularly as regards the desperate situation of Roma in Kosovo, where they are being subjected to a campaign of ethnic cleansing from the province by ethnic Albanians. He also promised to raise at a meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations in September the problem of a lack of adequate protection of Roma by the U.N. administration in Kosovo.

A second caucus session was attended by members of the governmental delegations of other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At our September 6, 2001 meeting, the under-secretary for human rights and minorities of the Slovak government, Ms Jana Kviecinska, Mr Zoltan Pecsi, a representative of the Hungarian government, Mr Peter Schatzer, a representative of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and the Romanian Under-Secretary for Minority Affairs Mr Attila Marko, graciously accepted our invitation to make brief statements and to answer our questions. The representative of the IOM faced hostility from the group due to the IOM's role in assisting governments in the expulsion of Roma from Western Europe, as well as the fact that the IOM has recently been given the task of distributing Swiss and German compensatory funding to victims of the Holocaust. Romani members in the session expressed their feelings of humiliation at the fact that Romani organisations have not been entrusted with distributing Holocaust compensation funding, especially in light of the fact that all other ethnic groups being compensated - Czechs, Jews, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and others - have been granted management of the distribution process.

Prior to the caucus meeting, the delegation had held a loud demonstration in the conference centre with the intention of drawing attention to Roma rights issues and expressing our solidarity with the Dalits, themselves held to be the lowest of the low by the majority in the societies in which they live. The march lasted around an hour and was widely reported in the local and international press and within the conference. While the demonstration was in progress, Anna Cervenakova was called to address the governmental delegations at the main plenary session and took the opportunity to deliver a speech similar to the one she had delivered the previous week, with such conviction that the Chair did not stop her from continuing well beyond her allotted time slot!

On September 3, 2001, Save the Children held a panel discussion entitled, "Denied a Future? The Right to Education of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller Children", in which members of our delegation were invited to participate as panelists to share their experiences and offer their suggestions for the future. The session was attended by Ms Mary Robinson, providing an ideal opportunity to present the concerns of Roma to the highest levels of the U.N. Mr Martin Demirovski, Ms Delia Grigore and Ms Michaela Zatreanu were selected by the group to represent us on the panel, alongside a representative each from the Scottish and Irish Traveller movements. Ms Nadia Foy, a Scottish Traveller, gave a particularly moving account of the abuse she encountered during her school days, culminating in her refusal to attend from the age of nine, a tragedy which is unfortunately more common than European authorities admit. Ms Grigore noted the importance of the family in education and the role of a child's family in passing on Romani culture. From her work as a teacher, Ms Grigore spoke of the effect on a child's self-esteem and dignity of the denigration of their culture - something which is a frequent occurrence in the school system in Romania. She also stressed the racism in mainstream schooling, demonstrated by the absence of Romani language, history and culture from the curriculum in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe. She called for the establishment of multi-cultural schooling, in which other cultures are placed on an equal footing with that of the majority.

A member of CERD present in the audience acknowledged the individual statements of the panel and agreed that CERD wanted to see education for Romani children, not against them, and education for non-Romani children about Romani culture and history. It was stated that CERD as a body stressed the importance of affirmative action in the education system in order to begin righting the wrongs of prior generations for today's Romani children. It was also stated that CERD recognises the importance of reserved places at secondary schools and university as important steps in raising the level of Romani participation in public life. Other issues raised by members of the audience were the practice of the governments around the region of Central and Eastern Europe of taking Romani children away from their families and placing them in state-run children's homes, so that possibly up to 80 percent of children in certain such institutions are Romani, with the resultant damage to the individual children and their families, and also to the wider Romani community. A number of individuals in the audience also spoke of the cruelty they had suffered as children. Such accounts added impetus to the agreed-upon call for multi-cultural education, teaching children respect for others and an education which treats all children as children irrespective of their ethnicity or lifestyle.

The outcome of the Durban process

As anyone reading this article will likely be aware, the third conference was not as successful as had been hoped. Unfortunately, while many had high expectations for Durban, and much effort was put in to making it a success at all levels, the third conference was ultimately no more able to produce a consensus among the international community than its forerunners had been. As of this writing, the final texts of the declaration and plan of action were still not available in an official version⁹. The fiasco surrounding the adoption of the NGO declaration, and the unfortunate language therein, causing it to be rejected by the Secretary-General of the Conference, Ms Mary Robinson, which meant the loss of nearly two years of preparatory work, were widely reported. The walk-out by the United States and Israel and the domination of the question of Palestine, as well as the issue of reparations for past wrongs such as slavery and colonialism, were perhaps more obvious from the outside than for those within the confines of the conference centre, but nevertheless impacted considerably on the success, both perceived and actual, of the conference. The self-imposed absence of the world's only remaining superpower has far-reaching consequences for the success of the agreement reached. Moreover, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, which captured the attention of the world and came only days following the close of proceedings in Durban, have removed the world focus from the events there. While this is understandable for the present moment, it is to be hoped that the commitments made in Durban will not be forgotten - indeed, the issues discussed in South Africa are even more pressing in light of the terrorist attacks on the United States and the possible repercussions we are all facing.

The Durban conference did however succeed in a number of basic aims. The high-profile nature of the conference did manage, albeit briefly, to focus the world community on the modern manifestations of racism and to draw attention to the importance of its eradication. Moreover, there were a number of welcome initiatives by individual governments or institutions. For example, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer announced that Germany had accepted the competence of CERD to examine individual complaints by making the necessary declaration under Article 14. Also, High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Mary Robinson stated that her office would be establishing an anti-racism unit, to be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the WCAR's final recommendations.

As for the Romani delegation, we achieved a number of our pre-conference aims. The success of our advocacy efforts in Durban is illustrated by the willingness of governments to adopt the paragraphs of the NGO declaration concerning Roma, without alteration, including the claim to non-territorial nation status. Our large and colourful presence and our outspokenness on issues affecting Roma established us as one of the most successful pressure groups in Durban, and we won a number of converts to the cause of Roma rights. We also made many friends, both Romani and non-Romani, with whom we will work in the coming months and years to ensure the implementation of the hard-won commitments made in Durban, as well as in the wider struggle against racism and discrimination.

Members of the ERRC Romani delegation in Durban worked hard, and in some cases around the clock, to maximise, as far as possible, the effectiveness of our presence there. Yet, we undoubtedly made mistakes, born mainly of inexperience at this level. A lack of trust, whether understandable or not, meant that we did not always co-operate fully with those from outside the group who could help us or, for that matter, with each other within the group. Such problems were exacerbated by the large size of the group, so that the group as a whole was not always as efficient and effective as it might have been. These problems had only mild effects at the conference itself, but may have more serious repercussions during follow-up: One clear effect of the overall inability to organise as a cohesive whole was that we returned from Durban without a clear and concrete agenda of our own for the coming years.

Perhaps the most important thing most members of the group will take away from their participation at Durban is simply the experience of being there - of having taken part - as the real work is yet to be done. The organisers of the third world conference against racism were at pains to convince those present that the real success of the conference was to be measured in the following years and not in what was said and done in Durban. The NGOs have a crucial role in the follow-up, in publicly holding governments to the sentiments expressed and encapsulated in the declaration, in demanding that they begin implementing the plan of action. The ERRC and other organisations can make a real difference in this area. In the light of an understanding that the real work is now ahead of us, one can only conclude that the fact that so many current and future leaders have had a taste of such a high level of international diplomacy will be of incalculable value to the Romani movement in the coming years.

Endnotes:

1. Morag Goodwin is a former intern at the European Roma Rights Center and was a member of the ERRC delegation to the World Conference against Racism in August-September 2001. She is currently a researcher at the European University Institute, Florence, exploring the concept of a non-territorial nation.
2. The full text is available on the Internet at http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm.
3. The documents from the European governmental meeting are available online at http://www.unhchr.org; the NGO documents can be found at http://www.icare.to.
4. The full text of her speech appears in this issue of Roma Rights on p.50.
5. The Joint Statement is reproduced in this issue of Roma Rights on p.52.
6. Despite the Foreign Minister's protestations to the contrary, there is a strong case for stating that the Czech Republic is indeed in violation of its international commitments under Article 3 of the ICERD, which demands that state parties "prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature [racial segregation and apartheid] in territories under their jurisdiction."
7. For details of the discriminatory nature of British immigration policy, see "Snapshots from around Europe", Roma Rights 2-3/ 2001, available at: Roma Rights 2-3/2001:Snapshots, as well as "Snapshots from around Europe" in this issue of Roma Rights, p.57.
8. The unofficial texts of the declaration and plan of action are however available from the website of the South African government, at http://www.racism.gov.za/.