Photo from the archive of Magenta Foundation for ICARE.
Recently I had an opportunity to sit down with colleagues and go over the documents and papers from Durban, the ill-fated 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. That year, in the long-lost era before 9/11, I helped lead a delegation of some 40 NGO activists from the U.S., Africa, Eastern Europe, and Russia, to sound our own particular notes at this world conference. We were involved in the lengthy preparatory process of several years and found over and over again that the "human rights-based" approach to the problems of discrimination was constantly marginalized, as movements favouring heavily-ideological approaches, incitement to extremism and provocation, and even violence, took precedence.
There was no question that international human rights movement was in a terribly weak position in this Durban process -- they had no intrinsic race, class, national or even grass-roots credentials to wield in this highly-charged politicized atmosphere. And as "offices, not movements," as E.P. Thompson used to make the distinction, they didn't have sufficient involvement in local initiatives and their politics to be able to sound a credible note. In some cases, they were too dependent on some extreme-minded groups for information to be able to vocally criticize their bad behaviour.
Indeed, the ideals of the international human rights movement had always been outside of nationality or ethnicity, and did not ascribe responsibilty -- or remedy -- for human rights violations to economic models for society, whether socialist or capitalist. That put human rights advocates directly at odds with ideologues from Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan and other bad actors at the UN. The human rights movement also eschewed violence as a solution -- which did not mean that it was pacifist in the face of clear-cut genocide, but which meant that *for its own movement in particular* it did not propose recipes involving armed force. These ideals were supposed to be the strength of the international human rights movement, its hidden wellspring of support in the face of seemingly insurmountable tyrannies, where it had achieved many victories.
Yet in Durban, the INGO tent was empty. It was less effective in dealing with the tyranny of other non-state actors.Few tried to caucus effectively to prevent the riot.
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