Wednesday, May 30
Back to the calendar
Dalits want Justice!
Several preparatory meetings for WCAR have highlighted the need to address caste-based
discrimination, the U.N. Recognizes Caste as a form of Racial Discrimination, but Caste remains Excluded from the WCAR.
Various manifestations of caste and descent-based discrimination and abuse exist in over a dozen
countries, yet it remains a neglected issue in the international community. Today at noon the Caste Caucus
organized a demonstration in front of the Palais des Nations. Said Paul Divikar, Dalit rights advocate and member of
the International Steering Committee for the WCAR: "It is a disgrace that the U.N. does not recognize the discrimination
of the Dalits". His hearfelt cry of 'Shame' was taken over by the other protesters. It was a nice turnout, about a 100 
people, members of the caste caucus and sympathizers from the several NGOs marched to the square in front of the main entrance of the U.N. building, carrying signs and banners with slogans like 'Caste is discrimination on the basis of work and descent' and 'Caste, untouchable in WCAR?' A Dalit member of the Indian parliament also spoke, stating that 'the government
of India does admit the discrimination of the castes, but they don't want the international discussion'
So, after the not-mentioned S-word (slavery) and the R-word (reparation) we know have the C-word (Caste). This
PrepCom with all of its problems is now also turning into a meeting of the Society of Forbidden words.
This was illustrated in a very petty way when demonstraters wanted to get back into the building. The U.N.
police officers confiscated the signs with the word 'Caste'.
More info on the Dalits and caste discrimination you can find in an article we published last week wednesday , or have a look at
the website of the International Dalit Solidarity Network: http://www.dalits.org
Today's NGO briefing brought us more news. NGOs will now be able to take the floor
in the governmental meetings, for statements of 3 minutes maximum, and you have to represent at least a caucus
or a number of NGOs. There is a little progress on the government front, concerning their draft and plan of
action, as they are working the evenings now too. But it is not much and the decision to add a week to the
PrepCom has been made, although they will only announce it officialy on friday morning. On top of this they will add 9 days of intersessional at the end of July/start of August.
The editing of the ngo draft is going well, the drafting commitee has now officially been granted the job of also doing the
drafting during the WCAR. THe draft will be published on the Internet (Sangoco and ICARE websites) Monday at the latest (including the program of action) and will also be mailed to the caucuses. Translations into Spanish and French will be ready somewhere next week. NOTE: the closing date for amendemnts has been moved to June 30 ! Further announcements: The Central Africa Caucus will organize a big WCAR preparatory meeting in July. Alberto announces that after meeting with the NGO liaison secretariat the news is that NGOs/Cauces reps get 15 minutes at the beginning of the day to speak in the governmental plenary .
Meeting with Mary Robinson
In the afternoon, the International Steering Commitee had a meeting with Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Subject was the concerns the NGOs have about the process and the number of Scholarships for the WCAR. Mrs Robinson stressed that she was also concerned but that she could only do so much: "The scope of this conference is very broad, but I'm afraid it is also a governmental conference". She futher stated that she also thought it was very important to get as many as possible participants to the WCAR and that she already had succeeded in getting more scholarships than ever before for a world conference. She promised however to send a letter to point out to governments that more are still needed. On the question of what she thought would be the best strategies for the NGOs during the WCAR in Durban she said: "You are doing fine and have, in my view, created enough inroads and possibilities". She agreed with the ISC that it was important to already start planning now for a follow-up of the WCAR, in order to ascertain that the follow-up goes smoothly.
From tolerance to acceptance
As promised, I CARE visited a meeting of the Religious and Spirtitual caucus today. They are working on their declaration right now, it will be finished by friday hopefully, so we can publish it. The Religious and Interfaith caucus is an interfaith group, consisting of Christians, Jews, Moslims, Bahai and others, and I might add, they are very sweet people. At the start of the meeting, they first took out a minute of silence to "take our minds out of this space....and then come back to the present" It works, by the way. You get more energy, you feel better, smile upon each other and the meeting goes smoothly. Special guest for the meeting was Moshe More from Sangoco who started to apologize that he missed the previous meeting. One of the perticipants told him "you are absolved" on which Moshe retorted jokingly: "that is the good thing of apologizing to a religious caucus, you always get absolution".
Moshe talked about how Sangoco saw the role of the religious community during the WCAR. He told that the plan is to start the NGO forum with a 15 minutes interfaith session (an Iman, a Bishop, a Rabbi, etcetera) like during the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. He further elaborated on the role of religions in the process, saying that religions can unify society, and that religions could play a role in addressing problems like poverty and racism, and during the WCAR speak out on what is happening in the different war-zones around the world. A caucus member said that Religion has often been the perpetrator of racism and evil and Moshe was relieved this was brought up as he had difficulty breaching that subject. Everybody agreed that for the WCAR the issues of poverty and class society should be addressed. After this, ICARE had to leave for another meet, but not before hearing Moshe tell the nice news that Mary Robinson will open the NGO forum in Durban, Kofi Annan will do the closing and Nelson Mandela might show up also,
although this is rather uncertain since he is working hard on writing a book.
That's it for today,
I CARE Newsteam.
Quotes of the day:
I have faith that if the governments can't get this done at least the NGOs will.
Hi Girls, want some chocolate?
The whole morning we were discussing one word. If it had to be 'flagrant' , 'serious' or 'gross' .
The 2 working groups have been useless up till now. We just keep on adding more paragraphs.
Hey, that's right, they're human beings!
More people here should be Rastafarians, everyone is so uptight.
Contributions by others:
For Indigenous Leader Juana Majel, Conference Problems Illustrate Institutional Racism
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE CAUCUS - POSITION PAPER