BuaNews (Tshwane)
Nelisiwe Masina
8 November 2001
Pretoria — Foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma says racism affected the world in different ways, citing the 11 September terror attacks on the US as ample proof that intolerance, bigotry and fanaticism were on the rise.
The suicide bombings of the World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, in which thousands of people were killed and hundreds injured, took place hardly a week after the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Durban.
'No country is immune to racism and related intolerances,' the Minister said in Parliament yesterday.
Delivering a provisional report on the World Racism Conference (WCAR), Dr Dlamini-Zuma said it could not be denied that incidents of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance were on the rise, especially in countries of the developed north.
'Equally appalling is the tendency in some developed countries - even here in South Africa - to vent out anger at a particular group of people because of their religion,' she said.
The Minister said the past few weeks had witnessed, hitherto, the rise of Islamophobia, anti-Arab sentiment and related intolerance in developed countries.
'It was for this and many other reasons that it was propitious and timely that the WCAR was held and set out an agenda to roll back the frontiers of racism,' she said.
The Minister said those who stayed at the conference because they cared deeply about the social ills that affected human beings worldwide, also stayed because they understood the urgency of launching a global movement against these scourges.
'Despite the absence of others, the conference concluded its work successfully and a global offensive against racism was secured,' she said.
Dr Dlamini-Zuma said all United Nations (UN) member states were now expected to translate the Durban declaration and put a plan of action into action.
She said in this respect, governments, civil society and the business sector would have specific roles in realising the objectives of the conference.
'The Department of Foreign Affairs will be making specific recommendations to Cabinet in the near future to ensure effective and appropriate action at national level,' the Minister said.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2001 BuaNews. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
