Pointless In-Fighting

Before the UN anti-racism conference began in Geneva, Andreas Zumach felt that an international conference on the Middle East would be of more use than the conference against racism - the reasons he gave are no less topical now than they were then

Like at so many UN gatherings in the past, the Middle East conflict threatens to entirely overshadow the UN anti-racism conference in Geneva, or even disable it altogether. Several states have already announced or threatened a boycott of the conference. Constructive debates on racism will barely be possible in Geneva. It would be better to cancel the event entirely and convene a conference for a just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead.

The task at hand in Geneva is for the 192 UN states to review the implementation of the action plan they passed two days before the attacks of 11 September 2001 at the "UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Forms of Intolerance" in Durban, South Africa.

Progress in the human rights debate

Some of the states that originally presented themselves as great defenders of the anti-racist agenda, such as Iran, Libya, Cuba and Zimbabwe, were longstanding dictatorships with notorious human rights records. There was a threat that racist and anti-Semitic positions might be included in the Durban closing declaration.

Although this scandal was narrowly avoided, the conflict had escalated so drastically in advance of the meeting that the United States and Israel ended up leaving the conference. On the whole, however, the conference did produce key progress in the human rights debate.

In its closing document, the conference rejected racist ideologies of all types, regardless of whether they are based on biological, cultural or religious differences between human beings. It particularly condemned apartheid, slavery, slave trading and colonialism. The rights of indigenous peoples were included on the agenda of the UN human rights system, along with the rights of people of African origin, Sinti and Roma and the situation of refugees and migrants.

Hypocritical instrumentalisation

The Durban declaration includes an action programme containing a long list of proposals to be implemented by the 192 member states. However, this stage has been slow-moving to date. In addition, new racist practices, stereotypes and perceptions have come about since 11 September 2001, particularly in association with the "war on terrorism" and increasing confrontations between Islamic and Christian-dominated Western states.

A constructive debate aiming for solutions and progress in implementing human rights in these areas is highly unlikely in Geneva. Too many parties are misusing the conference to fight out the Middle East conflict. This criticism extends primarily to the Arab and Islamic states under the leadership of Libya, Iran and Pakistan, which want to condemn Israel alone in the closing statement for its illegal occupation policy and the recent Gaza war.

On top of this, the governments of these countries would like to see any criticism of Islam and any presentation of their religion they consider unfitting in pictures, writing and speech labelled as racism, so as to justify the suppression of freedom of opinion and domestic opposition before the community of states.

Base motives

Yet the boycott campaign in Germany and other countries is not concerned with the actual subject of the conference either, but with protecting Israeli policy from any kind of criticism, no matter how justified this may be. The boycott campaign has illegally made use of the UN's protected symbol in its media material for this purpose.

Some of those governments that withdrew or threatened not to take part in the conference, citing the passages critical of Israel in the draft declaration, are also acting out of different motives.

The Berlusconi government, for example, would face considerable criticism over its racist practices towards African refugees or Roma and Sinti. The USA and Canada would be in the pillory – as in Durban in 2001 – for their treatment of indigenous populations. It is conspicuous that none of the states that criticised the Geneva conference in advance had presented a national action plan for combating racism – an obligation they entered into in Durban eight years ago.

Double standards and power retention

In the current climate, criticism of racist practices and other human rights violations is almost only credible when it comes from independent non-governmental organisations such Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others. The governments of the US-led West have severely dented their human rights credibility in the "rest of the world", primarily through their policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pointing out the West's "double standards" makes it easier for the autocratic regimes in the Arab and Islamic world to rebut criticism of their own human rights violations, instrumentalising the conflict in the Middle East for their own power retention interests.

Under these circumstances, further haggling over compromises in the formulation of the Geneva conference's final declaration is unlikely to build a foundation for constructive talks. That is the lesson learned at numerous other UN gatherings that have been dominated, impeded or blocked entirely by the Middle East conflict in the past. The same goes for debates in the UN Human Rights Council, founded three years ago.

An alternative and constructive approach

Instead of this meeting, destined as it is to fail, the UN should at last convene a conference leading to a just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders. There would be no need to argue over a basic document for such a conference: a suitable document already exists in the form of the "Geneva Initiative" negotiated between the Palestinians and Israelis with Swiss support in December 2003.

Only such a conference on the Middle East, especially one initiated by the Obama administration, could finally create the necessary dynamics of change in the Arab states, in Israel and within the Palestinian organisations Hamas and Fatah. This is the only way to finally build up the necessary pressure on those within Hamas and elsewhere who deny Israel's right to exist, as well as on the parties and politicians in Israel who reject a Palestinian state.

And that would also finally get things moving in the extensively ritualised debates and hardened international fronts inside and outside the UN. Without such an initiative towards a Middle East conference, we will only see more and more pointless diplomatic in-fighting of the kind that surrounds the Geneva conference.

Andreas Zumach

Andreas Zumach, born in 1954, is UN correspondent for the taz newspaper. Based in Geneva, he is a qualified economist, journalist and social worker. His most recent book is Die kommenden Kriege, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

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