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The World Conference was pushed to an
extra day to try to resolve the thorniest issues that could still
not be negotiated by the final day. These issues included
apology/reparations for the African slave trade; the description
of Israel's occupation of Palestine; Paragraph 73 calling for
action on caste discrimination (work and descent); statement
about racist application of death penalty; and recognition of
sexual orientation as a basis of discrimination needing to be
addressed.
Of these issues, the first two -
reparations and Palestine - were the ones that took up most of
the active effort and time of the delegates. They managed to
negotiate agreed text on both, but the Arab countries apparently
hardened their stance on the last morning, meaning that the EU
and others would not agree to the strong language demanded about
Israel. So language on reparations was agreed in the Working
Groups on the draft documents, but not on other issues. This left
many paragraphs under the category 'Ongoing' or 'Bracketed', with
no time left to discuss them.
On the last morning at about 7.30am,
Indian government asked for brackets to be put around Paragraph
73, and the chair agreed. This was despite the broad support for
the paragraph, and the inability of India to dilute the text
right up until the last morning. But there was no open discussion
about the Paragraph on the last day, so it remained one of the
paragraphs with no agreement.
True to the nature of the entire
conference process, the final plenary session focussed on
Palestine. The paragraphs on Palestine did not reach agreement,
and Syria at the last minute tried to reopen the discussion in
the plenary, with less than an hour of the twice-extended time
left. Other countries managed to push this to a vote, and Syria
did not get the support needed to re-open the discussion, so the
'Ongoing' paragraphs on Palestine were dropped. Tellingly, India
was one of very few countries to 'abstain' in this final vote.
But the Palestine paragraphs weren't the
only ones dropped. Due to the unwillingness of the governments to
re-open the discussion on Palestine, all of the other paragraphs
were also dropped from discussion, and simply disappeared. This
included Paragraph 73.
Additionally, it seems that Canada made
an agreement with other countries to change the 'list of
victims', and the compromise did not include 'work' as one of the
forms of multiple discrimination.
So in the end, the documents do not
include any reference whatsoever to discrimination on the basis
of work and descent, and thus have no language that directly
refers to caste-based discrimination – though there are many
references to discrimination on the basis of descent, which could
certainly apply to caste-based discrimination.
Perhaps the Indian government will take a
small amount of pleasure from this, but it is clear that they
achieved their goal of rejecting any admission of caste
discrimination only through technicalities and riding the tails
of the Palestine issue. They never won the debate, nor even
managed to change the text that had come into this Conference.
With all of the deals done behind the scenes to first get
Barbados, then Switzerland then Cuba, then Chile, then Namibia to
withdraw their open support for addressing the caste issue in the
conference (and serious questions will have to be asked about the
kind of inducements India offered to gain this support), a huge
number of countries still openly supported the original Paragraph
73 with no compromises.
The only reason that Paragraph 73 is
not now included in the final text is because it was too hot too
handle, becoming one of the most controversial issues of the
conference. The majority of countries could not agree with
India's claim that it should be diluted or deleted, mostly
because of the direct education done by Dalits themselves and
their supporters, during the NGO Forum and World Conference, as
well as in the 2 years leading up to Durban. During that 2 years,
the Dalit issue has gone from international oblivion to the
centre of the world human rights stage.
And everywhere the Dalit story of daily
oppression and violence was told, support was found. From
government delegates, to activists in every continent of the
globe, solidarity and commitment to action was found. The
indigenous people of Central America, the Roma of Europe, the
young worker activists of South Africa, the global women's rights
movement, the people of African descent, the youth, the migrant
workers, - all came out in support of the right of the Dalits to
have this immense form of discrimination addressed by the
international community. This is what we all most wanted from the
conference, because no matter what language is or isn't in the
document, the movement has won a huge moral victory. Clearly,
with the level of support and commitment now found around the
world, the issue is now on the agenda of the international
community, and will remain there until it is resolved.
Despite the sweet deals, the political
games, the use of government spies in NGO meetings, the slurring
of any groups supporting the issue and the final resort to
technicalities, the Indian government ended the conference even
further isolated in its quest to pretend to the world that caste
discrimination is not a problem in India. With the enormous media
coverage of this, the domestic and international cost of the
government's mean-spirited and hard-line tactics at this
conference will no doubt be very significant, and the
international support will do nothing but bolster the aspirations
and action of the Dalits to increase their fight for basic
justice, equality and human rights.
Posted on 2001-09-20
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