RIGHTS: No UN Accord Yet on Compensating Victims of Racism

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 30 2001 (IPS) - The question of reparations for slavery and colonialism has divided the delegations involved in drafting the final document for the United Nations-sponsored World Conference against Racism, to be held in Durban, South Africa, Aug 31 to Sep 7.

A bloc of African nations intends to approve measures in Durban about reparation, restoration and indemnity for countries, groups and individuals harmed by slavery and the slave trade, colonialism, and economic and political exclusion.

However, a totally different standard predominates among many industrialised countries, which are hard-pressed to discuss even moral reparations.

The final document for Durban will be debated until the last moment in the South African city, because in the two periods of the preparatory commission’s sessions, the regional groups have been unable to reach complete agreement on the text.

Knosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, admitted Tuesday that during this last session of the preparatory committee, May 21 to Jun 1, an accord has not yet been finalised on the “difficult issue” of compensation.

But despite the obstacles, the matter “is very important for confronting the past,” said the South African minister who is in Geneva to attend the preparatory sessions for the World Conference against Racism.

In South Africa, society is engaged in this “painful and uncomfortable” exercise, through a process that involves victims as well as perpetrators, she said.

Throughout centuries of colonial domination, first by the Dutch, then the British, and later the “apartheid” regime under the white minority, South Africa’s native African population was brutally subjugated by total racial segregation until 1994.

Dlamini-Zuma said that in South Africa it is easier today to confront the past “because both (victims and perpetrators) know that our destiny is very linked.”

Despite the discrepancies in Geneva about compensation for racial injustices, the South African official is confident that the delegates will “close that chapter in a way that is acceptable to all of us… and will be a product of negotiations between all of us.”

Consensus will be reached “only when we all agree that the past was a serious injustice and that it needs to be dealt with” in order to definitively end this chapter, she said.

The South African experience demonstrates that the compensation aspired by the victims include symbolic measures, such as providing wheelchairs for the disabled, school scholarships for the children of poor families, or a monument in a village to remember those who died in the battle against apartheid, pointed out Dlamini-Zuma.

It is impossible to put a price on reparations, but efforts should include elements that improve the victims’ lives today, their self-esteem and dignity, the minister said.

The essential aspects are to recognise the injustices of the past and that compensation must be the result of negotiations, she added.

Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, also acknowledged the difficulties the preparatory process for the Durban conference faces in reaching consensus on matters related to slavery and colonialism.

“Colonialism is particularly difficult because, for a number of colonial countries, there is a great sense of pride in their history,” Robinson said.

The negotiations will therefore require a considerable capacity for true compromise in order to engage in this painful process, added the UN official.

Robinson provided an analysis of the most recent racist violence in Europe, which occurred over the weekend in the English city of Oldham, where white “skinheads” attacked descendants of Asian immigrants.

The High Commissioner pointed out that “second and third generation British citizens are characterised even by the media as being ‘Asian’ in a way that doesn’t necessarily reinforce the fact that they are indeed citizens of the country.”

Robinson stated that it must be “recognised that in many European countries there are rising problems of xenophobia, rising problems of tensions – and political exploitation of these issues.”