Durban Review Summary: September 7, 2008
September 5, 2008, UN Watch
A UN session devoted to drafting the agenda and outcome declaration of the Durban Review Conference was held on Friday, September 5 in Geneva. During the meeting, the working group considered the recommendations proposed by the African Regional Meeting, held on August 24-26, 2008 in Abuja, Nigeria, singling out Israel as an occupying force and limiting the freedom of expression. According to Hillel Neuer, UN Watch’s executive director, “The offensive provisions of the Abuja declaration undermine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, encourage Middle East extremism while harming the cause of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and now threaten to become UN law in April.” UN Watch called upon France, currently chairing the EU, and on the newly appointed High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, to oppose the ratification of the document. “If the language of totalitarianism and the rhetoric of demonization are met with a business-as-usual attitude, then we are surely headed toward a replay of the 2001 Durban debacle.”
“Durban II Preparations Continue to Send Alarming Signals”
September 4, 2008, Eye on the UN
The Intersessional Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group, responsible for drafting the final declaration of the Durban Review Conference, has scheduled its next meeting for September 29, 2008, the eve of the Jewish New Year, precluding the participation of Jewish NGOs. On that occasion, the Friends of the Chair (Libya), including Iran, Pakistan and Egypt, will attempt to integrate the recommendations of the African Regional Meeting into Durban II’s final declaration. The latest draft issued by the working group promotes censorship of the media in its pursuit of an anti-racism agenda (paragraph 52). Prof. Anne Bayefsky, Editor of Eye on the UN, stated that by continuing to cooperate with the Durban II preparatory process, “It seems clear that the European Union has no intention of denying Durban II the legitimacy which its racist state supporters desperately seek.”
“Planned Conference on Racism Raises Concerns at the U.N.”
September 5, 2008, The New York Sun, Benny Avni
UN officials based in New York “are concerned [that the Intersessional Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group's meeting in Geneva] might reflect poorly on the United Nations as a whole” if it singles Israel out for criticism and once more equates Zionism with an apartheid regime. Such terminology would contribute to the demonization of Israel at the Durban Review Conference. According to NGO Monitor’s executive director, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, “the train has already left the station [...] The major difference between the event in Durban in 2001 and the one planned for Geneva [...] is mobilization by Jewish groups that plan to greet any diplomat or organization that ‘lends credibility’ to the conference with demonstrations meant to ‘name and shame’ them.”
September 5, 2008, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Dr. Shimon Samuels
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Kiyo Akasaka, complaining about a workshop held at the UN Conference on “Reaffirming Human Rights for All: The Universal Declaration at 60″ at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The workshop, entitled “Human Rights and Armed Conflict: Principles and Practices,” was co-sponsored by Nord-Sud XXI (affiliated with the Qaddafi Foundation for Human Rights of Libya) and the Arab Lawyers Union of Egypt, which played an active role at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, distributing antisemitic caricatures. During the workshop, Ilan Pappe accused Israel of “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing,” claiming that “Israel has done worse than Hamas, which legitimately uses terrorist measures to achieve liberation.” Such statements are reminiscent of the demonization of Israel pervasive at Durban I. In the letter, “The Centre urged the Under-Secretary-General ‘to condemn this propaganda opportunity granted to the Arab Lawyers Union and to the abovementioned speakers, as an insult to the Declaration of Human Rights itself, and to ensure that they be excluded from the forthcoming Durban II Conference, to be held at the United Nations, Geneva, next April. The participation in Geneva of such NGO cheerleaders for hate would inevitably guarantee a re-enactment of the racist hijacking of the first Durban UN World Conference Against Racism exactly seven years ago.’”
