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Cities are the global players - by Cyriel Triesscheijn

Discrimination and racism occur everywhere where people meet. Incidents, confrontations, but also interventions and solutions to problems are always practised in a local setting. Therefore, local communities often are the first to be confronted with racist incidents and are compelled to intervene and seek solutions. Local and regional work is often basic to the national and even the international work in this field.
That is why it is so important that several of the themes of the European Prepatory Conference for the 2001 United Nations World Conference against racism, specifically refer to the importance of the work at the local and regional level. In the field of anti-racism, cities are the global players.
In this paper for the ICARE-discussion on this theme I will elaborate some of the issues in which the local level plays an important or even dominant role.

Victim support

In the Dutch situation, there is a relatively strong infrastructure of local NGOs with a grass root tradition for the combat of racism and discrimination.These so-called Anti Discrimination Bureaux (ADBs) count about 40 local/regional operating agencies who are all active in the field of victim support. From my point of view, this is the first function of anti-discrimination work that should be guaranteed at the local level. This work should be organised on an independent basis, performed by NGOs with a low threshold for the local ethnic communities.

Fact-finding

Based on the work of victim support, the local level also constitutes a major source for fact-finding concerning structural problems. The systematic documentation of frequent forms of discrimination can be used to prove the existence of structural problems of inequality. Reports and reviews, based on local observations, can be used to lobby for and advocate structural race-equality measures (at both local and national levels).
In the end, even international reviews - like those to be published by the European Observatory in Vienna and the CERD - are based and dependent on the signalling function of local agencies.

Intervention level

The local level is also the level where equal treatment has to be guaranteed and where forms of unequal treatment have to be fought in practice. Discrimination in the field of housing, the labour market or education should be stopped where it occurs and this is often - in first instance - at the local level. From this point of view, the local society also constitutes the most important level of intervention.
The phrase "It is a good law but it is poorly enforced" holds true for experiences with anti-discrimination and race equality law in most countries. The quality of local implementation is crucial for the effectiveness of legislation and other measures to combat racism, also of those initiated and decided at the national or even the international level.

Need for exchange

In this way local agencies are in the best position to find out what works and what does not work and why this is so. In fact, from my point of view, the bulk of innovative work in this field is done at the local level. From this perspective, local agencies can benefit strongly from exchange with colleagues at the local level elsewhere. The United Nations World Conference should be used to explore possibilities in this field and to exchange experiences. Exchange should predominantly focus on experiences with implementation models within "good practice'' cases, because we can especially benefit from each other's experiences in this field. From this point of view, I would advocate the development of NGO city networks in the field of anti-racism comparable to predominant GO-networks in Europe like Elaine, Quartiers en Crise and Eurocities. The development of such a European NGO citynetwork could be a major result of the co-operation between NGOs in the Prepatory Conference.

Cyriel Triesscheijn

The author is working as general manager of the Rotterdam (NL) based NGO RADAR, a regional organisation for the combat of all forms of discrimination prohibited in the first article of the Dutch Constitution. He was one of the founders the Dutch Federation of anti-discrimination bureaux and has been active in the board of this and other national anti-racism organisations. At present he's also a member of the board of the Rotterdam Charter Foundation which is working on the promotion and distribution of the Charter "policing for a multi-ethnic society" at the European level.