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Durban Review Conferences begin with activists at the helm Civil Society Forum of the Americas poster (Karen Juanita Carrillo photo) With the official Durban Review Conference (DRC) scheduled to take place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 20 through 24 in 2009, the Brasilia
event was a chance for activists to talk about the efforts their governments have made toward eradicating racism and discrimination,
as called for in the World Conference against Racism's final "Durban Declaration and Plan of Action." SEPPIR - a government level ministry that promotes equal rights - represented the Brazilian government's sponsorship of the Civil Society Forum. Co-sponsored with various United Nations' agencies, Brazil played host to this first official follow-up to the U.N.'s "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR)," which was held in Durban, South Africa from August 31 to September 8, 2001. Sponsorship
of the Civil Society Forum was a daring risk in itself. Representatives of Israel, the United States and Canada have routinely
claimed that the WCAR was merely a racist forum that blamed Israel, in particular, for the problems in Palestine. Canada has
already declared that it will boycott the DRC -- and the United States, France, Israel, and England are currently threatening
to do the same, particularly since Libya is the elected chair of the Durban Review's preparatory committee. Cuba serves
as the committee's rapporteur, and Iran is an executive member. So
the United Nations, various governments, foundations and non-governmental organizations that have been mandated to conduct
a follow-up to the 2001 WCAR have been plagued with questions of whether they are promoting "anti-Semitism" by even
holding the event. Brazil took on that risk, in part because this gave its government an opportunity to boast about the advances
it has made in promoting racial equality. On March 21, 2003, President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva created SEPPIR, a ministry budgeted at 36 million Brazilian reais
per year (or more than 22 million U.S. dollars). Edson Santos noted in an interview that the creation of SEPPIR was
one of President Lula's first acts, in an effort to comply with the WCAR declaration and to respond to the demands of
Brazil's Black Movement activists. Because of SEPPIR, Afro Brazilians have been awarded more than 100,000 educational
scholarships; the ministry has developed programs for health care in Black communities;
and policies are finally being implemented to give land titles to the families of those living on Quilombo lands - areas where
Blacks established communities after escaping enslavement. Yet, even with
all of these advances, Brazil still has many problems when confronting racism.
Afro Brazilians themselves are still often reluctant to embrace their African heritage, even though some sixty percent of
the nation's populace is of African descent. "Many people know
they are Black, but too often Blackness is still associated with negative things,"
noted Antonio Cosme L. Da Silva of the Terreiro do Cobra, a religious organization based in Salvador da Bahia. "So, instead,
they use their individuality as a strategy to overcome racism." "There's
two things you can do," suggests Joao Carlos Noguera, a professor at the southern Brazil-based Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, "understand Brazil or make Brazil into something you can understand.
In our country, Blacks and whites live together; we were taught that we have had legal equality since 1890. We didn't
have Jim Crow or Apartheid; our restrictions have been economic and in terms of citizenship rights. This is where our
struggle Civil Society Forum of the Americas opening
ceremony The Durban Plan of Action affected
other countries in the Americas, as well. Afro Costa Rican congresswoman Epsy Campbell Barr recalled that "initially,
the fight against racism was an Afro-descendant concern. But now other groups - the indigenous, the LGBT, Palestinians,
immigrants, the Rom, Jewish communities, religious groups and more - have become part of the discussion. Groups that
were somewhat dispersed have now coalesced to unite in the fight against discrimination." Campbell Barr, who is also the founder of the Black Parliament of the Americas (and some say a likely presidential
candidate in Costa Rica's next election cycle), spoke about how "Governments have gone from total denial of the problem
- stating that there was no racism - to total commitment to attacking the problem. Many have supported agreements that
in the past had been ignored. Many of our social leaders have been welcomed into government discourses since Durban.
Governments have made efforts, but they have not advanced far enough - they are not combating racism forcefully enough.
And there's no real social pressure for change." Members of African
American and Afro-Canadian groups also took part in the Civil Society Forum. "Even if our governments have chosen
not to participate in this Forum, we remain engaged in the process," Margaret Parsons, the Executive Director of the
African Canadian Legal Clinic of Toronto, Ontario told those in attendance. "Durban was a watershed moment for
us and for communities that have historically suffered. The enormous diversity that exists in North America demands
no less than that we demand a strong anti-racist agenda for our region and for our region to be an example for the rest of
the world." The Civil Society forum conference preceded the official
"Durban Review Conference 2009 - Regional Preparatory Meeting," where governments of the Americas spoke about their
advancements. Their meeting also took place in Brasilia, from June 17 to 19, 2008. |
were greeted by Edson Santos, Brazil's minister of the 
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