World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - Speech by M. Charles Josselin, Durban 1.09.2001

 

M. Charles Josselin, Minister Delegate for Cooperation and Francophony

 

What country could better symbolize our hopes of vanquishing the scourges of racism and xenophobia than South Africa, where a people victoriously rose up to regain its dignity, to shatter the barriers of apartheid and to unite?

We are in Durban to tell the world that we utterly reject racism, xenophobia and discrimination in all its forms. We refuse to countenance the horrific massacres they provoke, and the daily humiliations that accompany them. Both are insults to the equality in dignity of individuals.

Faced with this many-faceted evil, all governments, all peoples, all women and men and all the world’s citizens are under a burning obligation to unite against it.

For there is only one human species, and we reject out of hand any theory attempting to assert the existence of distinct human species.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

Durban offers an outstanding opportunity for us to confront our common past. Let us have the courage to grasp it.

The practice of slavery dates from time immemorial. Although officially abolished, in reality it continues to be practised in various forms, insidiously, in some parts of the world. All civilizations have experienced, practised or approved it; all of them. With the discovery of the New World, the organization of the slave trade brought an expansion of this odious commerce on an unparalleled scale. Rooted in the denial of the Other, in his reduction to the status of an object, tool, or merchandise, the slave trade caused untold suffering, especially among the peoples of Africa, and their descendants in their places of exile. The World Conference should be an occasion for us all to acknowledge and express our regret, and to pay tribute to the memory of all victims of this trade. It should act as a stimulus to our process of remembrance, for at present those victims occupy too small a place in the official history and the collective memory of our countries. We must educate our children to keep this history alive, and I wish to pay tribute here to UNESCO’s pioneering "Slave Route" programme.

In 1848, the French Republic adopted the decree that definitively abolished slavery throughout its territory. To quote the words of Victor Schoelcher, the decree’s instigator, "the French Republic thus declares loudly and clearly that it excludes no one from its undying motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

Last May, on the proposal of several of its members, the French Parliament unanimously enacted a law recognizing that slavery, the transatlantic trade in black slaves and the trade in the Indian Ocean, perpetrated since the fifteenth century against the African, Amerindian, Malagasy and Indian peoples, constituted a crime against humanity. To date, France alone has taken such a step.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Colonialism is another dark page in our common history. Initially inspired by the desire to appropriate the wealth of other continents, though founded also on the domination of the Other, where the strong dominated the weak, this system too was a source of suffering and humiliation. It is right and proper that we should remember its invisible and nameless victims today.

This is not to say that colonialism can be defined purely in terms of its excesses or its systematic violations of human dignity. But let us have the courage to face up to certain facts.

Yes, colonialism did have lasting effects on the political and economic structures of these countries. The international community should show greater solidarity in addressing the issues faced by these countries, many of which were victims of the slave trade.

Because misery is often a fertile breeding ground for hatred and inequality in the world breeds all kinds of violence, we believe the issue of development and the fight against poverty is of central importance.

Cooperation between nations - which is what our Conference seeks to reinforce - is a powerful means of acting on the many causes of racism, discrimination and exclusion. France has included this dimension in its development aid policy, as in the relations of trust that it maintains with the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, in a number of specific projects.

My country is one of the most generous providers of official development assistance among the OECD’s members and intends to maintain that position. And because our aid must also be designed in a spirit of partnership, I welcome the New African Initiative, the commitment by the countries of Africa to work together for their development.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There is a part of our history that exceeded in horror, scale and systematic abjection all that went before it. This is the Shoah. To deny the unique nature of this crime against humanity would be to insult the memory of its victims, and a travesty of history. Every re-emergence of anti-Semitism should be condemned with utmost severity, however minor it might be.

Notwithstanding, as was underlined by Kofi Annan, no violence suffered by a people in their recent past or history will be tolerated as an excuse for them to inflict violence on other communities.

And yet the Shoah has not served as a definitive lesson for mankind. Prejudice, racial or ethnic hatred and fear or contempt of the Other, exploited for destructive ends, have bred other genocides and disastrous campaigns of ethnic cleansing. The African continent, like the Balkans, sadly provide painful examples of this.

If the Durban conference manages to persuade the international community to take a balanced, clear-sighted look at the tragedies of its past, to pay homage to all their victims, and to pass on to those we represent our determination to combat all attempts to repeat these tragedies in any form whatever, then in the eyes of France it will have achieved an essential aspect of its aims.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

While the aim of this conference must be to exorcize the past, it is also to tackle the present and above all to look to the future more effectively. Remembrance of the past forces us to intensify our fight against contemporary forms of racism.

In this fight, France draws its inspiration from a universal philosophy that recognizes the human person, in all their diversity, in all their freedom, respects them and protects their rights.

In keeping with the undertakings given when ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, my government has strengthened measures to prevent and punish racism and xenophobia. A recent law provides greater protection against discrimination in housing and work. A major effort is being made in the field of education and public awareness, drawing on the annual report submitted to the Prime Minister by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights.

French society is multicultural. My country has many descendants of slaves, especially in the Overseas Departments and Territories. The diversity of our population is a source of wealth to the nation, but some racist behaviour persists, condemned by our law and punished by our courts. This conference is also an occasion to take a hard look at our own society.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

France expects this Conference to establish the Universal Alliance against Racism as called for by the Presidency of the European Union in a thoroughly remarkable speech. France expects this Conference to come up with a far-reaching analysis of new forms of discrimination, and hopes it will provide a powerful impetus to fight these more effectively.

Among these new forms of discrimination, I would like to focus on the misuse of the new means of communication by people seeking to promote unacceptable racist views. The international community has a duty to prevent this contamination of the Internet.

Recent developments in the field of bioethics, too, call for extreme vigilance, for here we touch on the very essence of individual human beings, through their genetic patrimony. To prevent any such deviations, Germany and France have proposed that the international community adopt a binding instrument prohibiting cloning for reproductive purposes.

Finally, there is the question of equality of treatment in the administration of justice. This is an old question, but it remains as acute as ever. For us, the discrimination observed in this domain, particularly in cases of irremediable sentences like the death penalty, have become intolerable.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

Many people have placed great hopes in us. First among these are the most vulnerable sections of the population, those who suffer twofold discrimination, namely women and children, people marginalized by their sickness - I am thinking of HIV/AIDS sufferers - and those suffering from a handicap, those who suffer discrimination purely on account of their birth or their sexual orientation, refugees, migrants, and the victims of trafficking in humans. Special mention should be made here of the Romany and indigenous peoples whose culture, traditions and vision of the world are still alien to the modern States.

I welcome in this respect the role of national human rights institutions in the implementation of government measures to combat discrimination. I want to salute the courage and determination of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and tell her of my very high regard for her. Non-governmental organizations and defenders of human rights are key actors in this combat, in which both sides in industry, trade unions and business leaders are taking part, together with representatives of the principal religious and philosophical movements.

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My delegation has come to Durban with a commitment to work in a spirit of openness and dialogue for the success of the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. It will play an active and constructive part in your proceedings. We are confident that, at the conclusion of our meeting, the countries gathered here in the homeland of Nelson Mandela will be able to send a message of brotherhood and unity to the world and to affirm their common desire to enable each human being to live in dignity./.