タイトル：基幹研究「アフリカ文化研究に基づく多元的世界像の探求」平成 24 年度第 4 回公開セミナー
日時：平成 24 年 7 月 5 日（木曜日） 午後 6 時より午後 8 時
会場：法政大学 市ヶ谷キャンパス ボアソナード・タワー25 階 C 会議室
報告者： Pierre Sané 氏 (同志社大学特別招聘教授)
報告タイトル：Racism: Durban and Beyond（人種主義―ダーバン会議を超えて）
共催：日本アフリカ学会関東支部、科学研究費補助金基盤研究（A）「兵士・労働者・女性の植民地間移動にかんする研究」（代表：永原陽子）
報告要旨： 別紙参照

*当報告の内容は、それぞれの著者の著作物です。Copyrighted materials of the authors.

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA),Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Reflexions on Durban and after.
By Pierre Sane
Distinguished Visiting ProfessorDoshisha University
KYOTO
5 July 2012, Hosei University (Tokyo)
The United Nations held a review session at its September General
Assembly in 2011 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the World
Conference against Racism (22 September 2011). The General Assembly
reaffirmed that “racism was a negation of the purposes and principles ofthe UN” and deplored that despite the progress made the effective
implementation of the Durban Outcome had not been satisfactory. And
several delegates at the General Assembly stressed that “those statesand blocs of states still working against the action plan should abandon
their political maneuverings”(1)The Conference took place in Durban (South Africa) at the end of
August and beginning of September 2001, a few days before theterrorist attacks of 9/11 which brought down the twin towers inManhattan, New York and caused thousands of deaths. Eleven years on,
the controversy still rages about that conference and the United States
government did not join in the review session still reeling at what it
considered a conference of ‘hatred’. Canada and Israel decided also toboycott the Summit. Indeed no other UN gathering has generated somuch negative reactions in the Western world. The Durban Conference
ended with the spectacular withdrawal of the USA and Israelidelegations outraged, it seems, at the “singling out of Israel” and at theequation of Zionism with racism. The European countries threatened
also to pull out but ended up negotiating a final Declaration and Plan ofAction they could live with.
I led the Unesco delegation to this World conference after having
participated in its preparation as Secretary General of Amnesty
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International. In that latter capacity I had conducted AI delegations toother Human Rights conferences including Vienna in 1993,Beijing on
Women in 1995 and Rome on the International Criminal Court in 1998.
All these conferences ended up with Declarations and Plans of Action
adopted by consensus after heated debates. So did Durban. Then why all
the fuss? In my view it was due to the fact that for the first time thewestern countries were put on the defensive. While in the other humanrights conferences they saw themselves as holding the moral highground, and pushing the global human rights agenda in a progressive
direction, in Durban they were called upon to account for the past
atrocities they had visited on the peoples of the Global South. The
genocides of the Indigenous populations in the Americas, thetransatlantic slave trade, the wars of colonial occupation andexpropriations were all exposed as having been fuelled by racist
ideology and in turn having structured the unequal world we inhabit
presently. The persistence of racism today was deemed in Durban to be
the legacy of centuries of European expansion and brutality. Europe andNorth America were thus called upon to apologize and pay reparations
to the descendants of their past victims. Which they objected to.
The other major contentious issue was linked to the proceedings andoutcome of the civil society forum and to the rejection of its Declarationby the High Commissioner for Human Rights due to the use of“inappropriate language”. The NGO Forum was primarily derailed by theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict where the debates led to accusations of “antiSemitism” and to the withdrawal of some international and Jewish
Ngos.This, coupled with the withdrawal of the USA and Israel, wasmagnified by the western press which hastened to extend thequalification of “failure” to the entire Durban process without evenawaiting the outcome of the governmental conference. In the process
the work of the 6000 or so groups who participated in the preparationand holding of the conference was not submitted to and examined by
the intergovernmental forum which failed in the end to address thediscriminations suffered by Palestinians or occasioned by the belonging
to a “caste” in countries like India and Japan or in West Africa or to referto the fate of black people living in Arab countries.
But still many “invisible” victims did show their faces to the world at theconference. Seemingly trivial but really very telling was a delegation of
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“Pygmies” who came to publicize for the first time at a world conference
the threats to their society from war in Central Africa. Afro-Latins also
spoke of their suffering. The presence of delegations of Roms, Gypsies,Sindis and other “travelling people”-all victims of a racism ignored by
the international community-were able through their links with Ngos tohave their say in the conference’s final declaration and action plan.
Many other victims were clearly identified. Now it is up to Governments
and Ngos to do something about them. For these victims this was asignificant achievement brought by Durban.
Durban was the 3rd world conference against racism. It followed on 2
previous gatherings focused on the struggle against apartheid. Durban,
in South Africa, was thus meant to be a celebration of the dismantling ofinstitutional racism but at the same time a recognition of the rise inmost regions of the world of diverse forms of social and urban apartheid
based on structural discrimation that is racial in character; whether
explicitly or implicitly while no longer having to draw on racial
representation. Racism in other words reinvents its justification andmode of expression as it is defeated by science education and reason.
Mobilization is therefore crucial because at the end of the day racism isthe expression of a doubt concerning the principle that every human life
is of equal worth and that we are all equally accountable for each life.
Racism is the very negation of human rights and its most dangerous
expression since it can lead to the most abominable of all crimes, thecrime of genocide. This is why in a 21st century opening up to all kindsof confrontations and dangers such a conference was so crucial.
Irrespective of the assessment one makes of Durban it had the merit ofmobilizing internationally around racism at the beginning of the 21stcentury, in establishing a framework to combat contemporary forms ofracism and in enshrining on the global agenda two interrelated moral
and political issues which will shape debates and struggles around
racism in the years to come: these are “Taking responsibility for thepast” and “the Racial nature of the western state”. The success ininfluencing the outcome of the debate will of course depend on thestrength of the social movement carrying the struggle.
In response to the claims for reparations contained in the preparatory
documents for Durban the reaction of many European governments canCopyrighted Material of the Author.

be summed up as follows: “Present generations should not be expected
to take responsibility for crimes committed in the past”. This isunderstandable given the fact that the crimes committed by Europe area long list of unrequited injustices dating back to the assault on the restof the world following the “discovery” of the “New world”, leading to thephenomenal transfer of wealth and subsequent enrichment of western
nations to the detriment of the global South and to the persistentinequalities that today result from this past. However for many of thedescendants and successors of those who were wronged, historicalgrievances have become the focus of demands for reparations and theneed for restitution has become a major part of national politicaldebates and international diplomacy.
Janna Thompson in her seminal work (2) argues that historicalobligations for reparation are grounded in a concept of a society or anation as a “intergenerational community” with transgenerational
obligations to honor the commitments of their forebears and repair
their past deeds and past “acts of disrespect” vis a vis other nations. It is
this moral relationship between generations that allows a politicalsociety to act justly in a world of nations. In the same way as we accept
nowadays that we have duties to future generations notably through theobjective of sustainability in managing environmental concerns weought to take responsibility for the commitments and deeds of ourpredecessors.
As for the descendants of the victims they have rights of inheritance topossessions taken unjustly from their forebears (e.g. land) because of“lifetime-transcending interests” of individuals and because of harmsthat result from wrongs done to their family lines. And further equity
demands that those who benefit from the results of past unjust
interactions share with those who suffer loss. This is a moral
requirement that is more and more gaining acceptance.
This is the problematic, which found an airing for the first time in aworld arena at Durban. It will from now on linger on all debates on
Human Rights and affect adversely western nations’ moral authority
unless the issue is addressed in ways that advance justice andreconciliation. In this respect Durban can be considered as the formal
beginning of a process since the final Declaration recognized that theCopyrighted Material of the Author.

slave trade and slavery constituted a crime against humanity and that
there was a “moral obligation” to pay financial compensation for wrongs
committed.
This has inspired many actions since then. The Herreros in Namibia
have initiated lawsuits against the German government for genocideand for what is now considered a rehearsal for the Nazi concentration
camps in Germany during the 2nd world war. The Mau Mau families inKenya have taken the British Government to court for colonial crimes
committed in the 50s and 60s.Black Americans are demanding
apologies and reparations for slavery a crime qualified in Durban as acrime against humanity and therefore imprescriptible. The governmentof Algeria has made it a condition for improved relationships withFrance that its Government recognizes the crimes committed during thecolonial period and apologizes for that. Indigenous peoples in Australia
and New Zealand have been reenergized in their struggles to recuperate
lost land. Durban has closed the era opened by Christopher Columbus
and has called for a new reading of that period of our common history. Itstarts with the opening of all archives as demanded by Unesco at theWorld Conference.
The second challenge is brought by the migratory trends from South toNorth and the management of diversity. Going beyond the extremes ofNazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa, Goldberg in his book entitled“The Racial State “(2) has defined the role of the modern (western) stateas the production and reproduction of political social and cultural
homogeneity and of sameness; of ensuring the reproduction of acommunity cut from the same “cloth” in the face of increasing
heterogeneity globally. To achieve this the state uses its power toexclude (e.g. Fortress Europe) and by extension its power to include
albeit in racially ordered terms aided by the capacity provided by thelaw, policy making; by the bureaucratic apparatuses, invented histories
and traditions, ceremonies and cultural imaginings. This becomes evermore needed when growing individualism combined with a globalizing
culture “threaten national identity” and leads to a state (France)
organizing a public debate on “national identity”.
Recent debates in Europe around multiculturalism (Germany and GreatBritain) around the place of Islam (Holland), the veil (France), theCopyrighted Material of the Author.

integration of “second generation migrants” point to the continuous
practice of considering the “other” as a threat to the social cohesiongrounded on the alleged previous sameness. In the process classcontradiction is transcended to protect the ever-growing imbalance inthe distribution of national wealth in favor of the rich by creating
through a constructed and reconstructed “sameness” an “us” against“them”. As for the “other” he/she is summoned to “integrate”, torenounce attributes of his/her identity to repudiate his/her “community”
and religion and to become invisible; confined in ghettos, populating theprisons and forming a new underclass. This is accompanied of course bya magnifying glass shed on the achievements of a few individuals
emerging from “la diversite”in politics and other fields of the publicsphere (e.g. media, fashion, sport etc). These are after all liberal
democracies and the illusion of equal rights must be maintained!
The issue of regulation and integration of migrants has remained acentral focus for the post Durban process as exemplified by the recent
report of the working group preparing the commemoration ofDurban+10.The recommendations formulated in the document (fromthe ratification of the Convention of migrants’ rights, to the humanrights’ approach to the management of migrations, from the information
campaigns to eliminate stereotypes to more just conditions ofemployment) continue to pose serious challenges to the fixed and staticconcept of citizenship and hence to the racial state. Goldberg states thatthese are challenges to the grounds of the constitutive conditions of thestate itself and he goes on to ask: “Can a state be predicated onassumptions of heterogeneities? Can a state constitutively be open to
the flows not simply of capital but of human beings recognized equally
and with equal sensitivity, on and in equal terms, as belonging in theirflows to the body politic?” This he asserts will not happen without thedevelopment of vigorous social movements defending the generalinterest. Durban with its impressive mobilization of civil society
organizations debating passionately and building transnational
networks did appear as a manifestation of the coming to being of such
movements.
Unfortunately in the years following Durban such a social movement
has failed to ignite a broad mobilization to entrench the issue andespecially the issue of reparations on the international agenda.
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According to Rodha Howard-Hassmann in her book “Reparations toAfrica”(4) the movement for reparations to Africa lacks the capacity forsocial mobilization, is defective in its organization and inept at tacticalmanoeuvering. It so far consists only of a few individuals, and a small
network with no formal structure. Further it has not succeeded inframing a compelling and coherent narrative bogged down as it isbetween demands for reparations for the slave trade and/or colonialism
and/or neocolonialism.
African governments after the activism of the 1990s through notably theAfrican Union seemed to have lost steam and reverted to the classicalcalls for an increase in aid and investments. The probable reductions inaid flows in the wake of the financial crisis in the West may reopen theissue in the African Union but I do not see at the moment any potential
leader among African states ready to wear that mantle for fear of being“punished” by a further reduction in aid. In this respect Durban might
have been the end of the movement at the intergovernmental level andnot the beginning.
It is fair to say that the urgent matters of democratization, conflicts andpoverty hardly give space for an issue that can only be solved in the longrun and governments and civil society organizations have to sort out theimmediate contradictions that beget African societies. It is not
surprising therefore to find the most active reparationists in the African
diasporas in Europe and North America. But they can hardly lead themovement in lieu of the Africans themselves. Further they are notfinding any resonance with western public opinion and ultimately they
are confronted with immediate struggles regarding their own status andintegration in western societies.
It appears therefore that the most promising strategy would be for now
to focus on the surviving victims of colonial abuse and use judicial
procedures. Hence the success of the challenges to discriminatory
payments made to the African war veterans who fought alongside theirFrench counterparts during the 2nd world war, the Herreros and Mau
Mau victims, all cases, which could inspire other victims of colonial
abuse. Provided of course they get the support of their respective
governments or sponsors in western countries.
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As can be seen from this brief discussion Durban has merged the past,
the present and the future in addressing the issue of racism anddiscrimination. Even though in these reflexions I have mostly concerned
my self with Europe, which is, where I presently live, participants in theDurban process and especially civil society representatives made it
abundantly clear that various forms of discriminations continue todisfigure social relations in all parts of the world. The struggle therefore
is not just a global one i.e. in those countries who shape and dominate
global relations but also one which must take place at the local level.
The Review Conference of 2009 has produced a weak outcome
document and the September outcome document of last year did notfare any better but at the end of the day what matters is to find ways ofenhancing mobilization of civil society organizations and more
importantly mobilization of the victims of racism to defend their humanrights and reject dehumanization.
Let me leave you with a quote of Nadine Gordimer the celebrated writerof South Africa extracted from her novel The House Gun about Harold
and Claudia Lindgard:
The Lindgards were not racist, if racist meant having revulsion against
skin of a different colour, believing or wanting to believe that anyone whois not your own colour or religion or nationality is intellectually ormorally inferior. Yet neither had joined movements, protested, marched inopen display, spoken out in defense of these convictions. They thought ofthemselves as simply not that kind of persons; as if it were a matter of
immutable determination, such as one’s blood group, and not failed
courage.
Martin Luther King was similarly outraged by the silence of ‘goodpeople” in the face of untold injustice.
It will take outrage and action from us all to defeat racism and protect
human rights based on dignity and equality.
This is what being human means.

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(1) United Nations GA/11149(2) Jana Thompson: Taking responsibility for the past. Polity press 2002
(3) David Goldberg: The Racial State. Blackwell 2002
(4) Rhoda Howard-Hassmann: Reparations to Africa. University ofPennsylvania Press 2008

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