With Canada and Israel now having formally withdrawn from the UN’s 2009 Durban II conference, serious questions are emerging over the attendance of other democratic states.
Australia may become the next state to pull out:
Australia is concerned that anti-Semitism could mar a United Nations conference on racism next year.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said this week that America, New Zealand and the European Union supported Australia’s concern about the follow-up to the 2001 Durban conference against racism, which is scheduled for April in Geneva, Switzerland.
The U.N. Durban conference in 2001 has been described by critics as an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate-fest. Israel and America walked out in protest midway through the conference.
The Australian spokesman, Scott Bolitho, confirmed that Australia had not yet decided whether to attend the conference, which has been dubbed “Durban II.”
“We will base this decision on a thorough consideration of whether Australia, and other countries with a genuine interest in countering racism, can positively influence the outcomes of the Review Conference,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
As The Economist reports, the list of potential quitters is a long one, containing significant players, although some equally significant players, like Germany, want to continue the fight on the inside:
America, Australia, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic may also quit unless things change. Others, like Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the Scandinavians seem keener to try influencing the tone from inside.
As the same piece argues, the cause of Durban II “is not helped by the fact that it is being organised by the UN’s much-criticised Human Rights Council, with Libya chairing a preparatory panel that includes Iran, Cuba, Russia and Pakistan.”
Which is why whatever democratic legitimacy the conference has may well be determined by whether or not the US participates. The prospect of the United States first black President deciding to withdraw from a UN “anti-racism” parley could deal it a death blow, at least in PR terms.
So far, there are no firm indications either way. Still, it’s worth recalling the statement made by Hillary Clinton, who is front-runner to be Obama’s Secretary of State, at AIPAC’s convention earlier this year: “We should take very strong action to ensure antisemitism is kept off the agenda at Durban II. And if those efforts should fail, I believe that the United States should boycott that conference.”
“… Spain, Austria, Belgium and the Scandinavians seem keener to try influencing the tone from inside”?
I bet they do. The main question in my mind is “In which direction?”
Here is another call to boycott Durban by Pascal Bruckner, the French Philosopher, on the grounds that:
“…Anti-racism in the UN has become the ideology of totalitarian regimes who use it in their own interests. Dictatorships or notorious half-dictatorships (Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Cuba etc.) co-opt democratic language and instrumentalise legal standards, to position themselves against democracies without ever putting turning the questions on themselves. A new Inquisition is establishing itself, which brandishes “defamation of religion” to quash any impulses of doubt, particularly in Islamic countries. And this at a time when millions of Muslims, particularly in Europe, want to distance themselves from bigotry and fundamentalism. In a reversal of values, anti-racism is being propagated by despots in the service of obscurantism and the suppression of women! It is being used to justify precisely the things which it was formulated to fight: suppression, prejudice, inequality.
In the hands of these powerful and organised lobbies, the UN is becoming an instrument of retrogression in the world, when it was created to promote justice, peace, and human dignity….”
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1710.html
It’s refreshing to hear of a more concerted clear-headed quality, from a wider array of nations than merely Canada, the U.S. and Israel (whom I believe were the only ones who walked out of and adequately protested Durban I).