RIGHTS-EUROPE: Advance of Racist Right-wing Worries UN

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 21 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, declared her concern Tuesday about the return in Europe of an extremist right-wing that feeds nostalgia for the Nazi past and she condemned attacks against immigrant Moroccans in southern Spain.

Robinson’s statements, made in honour of International Day on the Elimiation of Racial Discrimination, targeted electoral advances of the extreme right in Switzerland and the inclusion of Joerg Haider’s right-wing Freedom Party into Austria’s governing coalition.

The High Commissioner’s comments reflect the attitude of the European Union’s highest officials, who reduced their formal contacts with Austria, one of the bloc’s 15 members, shortly after Haider’s party took office.

Robinson, former Irish president, also mentioned the xenophobic attitudes manifest in several African countries, and criticised the institutional racism of certain police forces and prison systems.

This incomplete list of sad and horrible incidents is a clear warning that fanaticism and prejudice are alive and well, said the UN official.

In Geneva, Robinson led ceremonies for the Day on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a yearly event established by the UN to commemorate 69 unarmed protesters in Sharpeville who were gunned down by forces of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Africa must still win the battle against racism, said Sipho George Nene, Pretoria’s representative before international agencies in Geneva, at a roundtable meeting in preparation for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, to be held in South Africa in September 2001.

The African continent, overwhelmed by the numerous problems it faces on the road to development, has frequently ignored the issues of racism and racial discrimination, said Nene.

This is apparent in the ethnic and tribal wars that have devastated the economies of many African countries and which continue to unravel the region’s social fabric, explained the South African delegate.

Robinson and Nene are confident that next year’s conference will produce concrete results that go beyond superficial declarations that condemn racism.

Experts from various regions took part in a seminar last January in Bellagio, Italy, where they established some possible goals for the conference, which they hope will have a broad effect on the international community.

One of the proposals is to discuss the forms and expressions of racism – including its causes – in contemporary global society.

Another is to evaluate the victims of racism, especially indigenous peoples, ethnic, national, religious and linguistic minorities, in addition to marginalised majorities.

Among the major points suggested for the conference is the analysis of remedies, resources, reparations and compensatory measures and to develop strategies to achieve full and effective equality and responsibility.

Gay McDougall, US delegate to the UN Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination, said that the suggestion had been made in Bellagio that presidents of multilateral and regional development banks should emit a declaration at the South Africa conference about the economic costs of social exclusion.

Another proposal arising out of the Bellagio meeting was to create a world educational service over the Internet that includes a programme for multicultural and anti-racist teachings.

But McDougall warned that the success of next year’s conference will depend on the presence and participation of all actors and sectors of society that have an interest in the fight against racism.

In addition to the people most affected by racism and intolerance, the South African conference must encourage the participation of state and civil organisations that have an effect – whether positive or negative – on racism, the US delegate concluded.