RIGHTS: Remedies Against Racism Available, But Not Applied

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 23 2000 (IPS) - A group of experts convoked by the United Nations concluded in this Swiss city that international instruments and conventions provided procedures for protecting vulnerable groups from racial discrimination, but that they frequently were not applied at a local level.

The international instruments remain abstract, mere theories, due to the failure of States to apply or enforce them, or incorporate them into national legislation, said Theo van Boven, a member of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

In other cases, legal remedies against racism are made available by national legislation, but people are not aware of their existence or – worse yet – “they are even intimidated and afraid to make use of them,” said Van Boven, a Dutch national.

Many victims of racism feel little hope for change, he pointed out. “They have been born in a situation which is discriminatory, and live there their whole lives.”

But the availability of legal remedies against racism can transform the lives of victims, and of the survivors of the worst manifestations of discrimination, such as undocumented workers and people caught up in the trafficking of women and modern forms of slavery.

Virginia B. Dandan, of the Philippines, who chaired the Feb 16- 18 seminar held in Geneva, stressed that remedies against discrimination and measures designed to protect victims must not be limited to the political and civil fields, but must also be made available on the economic, social and cultural fronts.

Commenting on the resolutions approved at the seminar, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said “I believe that it was important that the seminar gave particular attention to special vulnerable groups, who frequently are the most marginalised, the poorest, the least educated, and frequently have the least access to official recourse procedures.

“I’m very pleased that you discussed recourse procedures for non-citizens, migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees, indigenous peoples, aliens, children, young people and women,” she added.

One of the points adopted by the seminar expressed concern over the lack of legal measures designed to protect non-nationals imprisoned in developing countries.

And Robinson pointed out that in many countries, minorities accounted for a significant proportion of the prison population, and one that is “increasing relative to their representation in the larger population.”

To protect victims of racism, the seminar urged States to create independent national institutions and provide adequate resources for them to function.

Governments must “recognise that national human rights institutions play an important role as watchdogs,” stated point five of the resolutions, which also “stresses the equally important role of critical and constructive NGOs [non-governmental organisations] in the work of national human rights institutions.”

Van Boven underlined that victims need more legal assistance in order to take advantage of available legal remedies.

But, he added, the problem of racial discrimination “is not only a question of procedures or of individual recourses; there must also be policy changes, redistribution of resources, because many forms of racial discrimination are related to structural issues and economic and political repression.”

Van Boven predicted that the World Conference Against Racism to be organised next year in South Africa would be “extremely complicated,” due to the changing perceptions of the phenomenon of discrimination.

“When we were dealing with racism in previous conferences, we were looking always at the others: at South Africa or the Middle East. Now we start more and more to realise that racism is in all our countries,” he stated.

“We cannot only point our finger elsewhere and say this is a matter for others,” he said, adding that “it is a global problem, but it is also the problem of every individual country.

“Now it has became everyone’s issue, and we all have to learn lessons, all of us. And that makes it complicated, but at the same time it makes the conference more necessary, perhaps even more so than in the past.”

Robinson said the seminar’s conclusions would be submitted to the first meeting of the preparatory committee for the World Conference Against Racism, slated for May 1-5 in Geneva, after the Mar 22-Apr 27 sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission.