Word: durbans
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Last week, the Durban Review Conference, also known as the World Conference Against Racism or Durban II, was convened in Geneva. The conference was the sequel to the 2001 meeting held in Durban, South Africa, which originally aimed to eliminate racism and xenophobia. Eight years ago, the proceedings rapidly descended into a “hate fest” as Muslim-majority states hijacked the stage as an opportunity to berate Israel and the West. While Durban II was not the same sort of vitriolic, one-sided attack that many had expected, it was nonetheless far from constructive. As such...
...first speakers (and the only head of state to attend the conference) was Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has in the past called Israel a “rotting corpse” and advocated wiping the country off the map. Unsurprisingly, his speech at Durban II accused Israel of being “the most cruel and racist regime” in the world. But perhaps the most offensive aspect of the entire spectacle was that Ahmadinejad’s speech came on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the millions of Jews who were murdered...
...Outcome Document devotes just one line to an expression of remembrance for the Holocaust, but it dedicates two entire paragraphs to an exhortation for “all international sporting bodies to promote…a world of sports free from racism.” Durban II’s resolutions would be comical if they were not so offensive to the survivors of genocides and to those who are currently threatened...
...Further, Durban II did not offer any substantive solutions to the ills of racism. The Outcome Document recognized that combating racism is “of crucial importance…for the promotion of cohesion, but argued that, in order to achieve this “crucial” end, it was necessary to “increase appropriate preventive measures to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.” So, essentially, in order to eliminate racism, it is important to eliminate racism. The document did suggest that national governments, non-governmental organizations, and the media could...
...have a history of ridiculous attempts to exert influence by not being present, as in our refusal to join the League of Nations and our boycott of the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. And, in 2001, the U.S. and Israel walked out on the first conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, because certain parts of its final resolution explicitly alluded to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as being driven by racism. Though these references were actually removed from later drafts of the Geneva declaration, the U.S. cited concerns over Ahmadinejad as reason enough to stay away from...