A very bad day at the Racism Conference

Globally, the conflicts have been brewing since the beginning. There has been some preliminary media about WCAR, and the various PrepComs leading up to the event, and an impartial observer’s conclusion could only be that the WCAR drafting process has been at best a difficult and fraught negotiation, and at worst, a diplomatic bloodbath that was in danger of moving the agenda backwards rather than forwards. The "deal-breakers" have been, and still are:

• Compensation and apologies for the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade
• Conflict in the Middle East – can Zionism be equated to racism, are the conditions in Palestine a new form of apartheid?
• Caste – can caste issues become racism for groups like the Dalits? (an issue which has been taken off the government agenda by India but pushed by NGOs)

Australia is not obviously affected by any of these issues, except by analogy with the slave trade debate in terms of reparations for the stolen generation and an apology. The most pressing items on Australia’s agenda from an NGO perspective were indigenous peoples, our experience of multiculturalism, and refugee and asylum-seeker issues. After Australia’s extremely negative reaction to the UN Committee for Racial Discrimination report last year and immediate calls for treaty body reform, the NGO community may not have had high hopes for a constructive government response to WCAR. Nevertheless, many NGOs considered there were things the Australian government could justifiably put forward as "best practice" or suitable for global emulation, such as the National Museum, SBS radio and TV, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and so forth.

Therefore, a coalition of Australian NGOs have pressed on and been urging the government in a constructive manner to get more involved with the Conference, to send a high-level delegation, to publicise WCAR and to fund the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to hold consultations about WCAR in Australian communities. In the end, HREOC held excellent regional consultations around Australia and a Civil Society Forum, but with funding given by the UN rather than our own government. ATSIC held an extremely important conference on indigenous peoples and racism, attended by indigenous people from the USA, Canada, NZ and Australia, and the only forum of its kind. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Philip Ruddock was to lead a delegation, which had several civil society representatives, a youth representative and State ministers.

Then the wheels fell off when a ship called the Tampa rescued a sinking boat.

Australian NGOs in Durban issued this statement at the beginning of WCAR on Friday 31^st August:

So what is the lesson? It may be that all the work that went into WCAR from Australians has been for nothing in terms of Australia’s reputation on racism issues in Durban itself. Activists here are reeling as to the massive popularity of the Tampa decision with the Australian public.

Perhaps the lesson of Durban and the Tampa is that NGOs here and globally need to go back to basics in their own communities. Perhaps it is yet another historical lesson about the power of leadership to tap into the fears and insecurities that underlies racist and xenophobic attitudes for electoral gain, currently happening around the globe. Perhaps Mary Robinson will rescue the final Declaration and Program for Action and it will still be an important document. Or perhaps Durban was just a necessary first, faltering step in the right direction of a long journey. That’s my fervent hope.