Monday, August 6, sixth day

'NEVE SHALOM WAHAT AL-SALAM, THE OASIS OF PEACE'

***TODAY***TODAY***TODAY***

***Editorial****Videobite:Shimon Samuels***Today´s happenings***Quotes of the day***Contributions by others***

LATEST VERSION OF THE NGO DRAFT DECLARATION AS PER 31-7-2001



Editorial

Last Saturday evening Ronald and me joined Maria Miguel Sierra from ENAR and Mutombo Kanyana, Member of Groupe de réflexion et d'action contre le Racisme anti-Noir. Mutombo prepared dinner in his home and after we went for a drink at a jazz cafe in the neighborhood. During dinner we had managed to avoid the subject WCAR and PrepCom, as we were trying to relax and get rested. But upon arrival at the cafe terrace the discussion soon came to the familiar subject. After a hour or so of talking the guy sitting next to us said: "I'm sorry but before I bust a gut, what kind of work do you do? I was listening to your conversation and was trying to figure this out." It made me wonder about the significance of the WCAR in the scheme of things.

When our organisation, the Magenta foundation, committed itself to do I CARE*, we committed ourselves to disseminating information and to give everybody, not just those who can afford to participate in person, a voice. We strongly belief that, if more of society has an opportunity to give imput, this will create more of a bases for actually doing some of the things that are in the final documents of the WCAR. Having taken that position it means that we, as I CARE, are dedicated to report on the issues, not take part in the discussions about the issues. On one hand I'm really glad that we just report on the other hand it is also really difficult, those who know me personally will agree, for me to keep my big mouth shut. I've managed pretty good so far. Now, half way through the third PrepCom, I feel the strong need to air some personal comments, before I implode.

This is my first experience with any sort of UN conference, the way I understand how this usually works is that the NGO community goes to these things to lobby governments to support them on their issues. The NGO forum is set up so we can:

  1. Mutually support and reinforce each other
  2. Develop lobbying strategies together
  3. Exchange ideas which might be helpful in understanding each others issues

What I see happening within the NGO community so far is:

  1. NGOs have to lobby each other on the issues, to the extend that there is hardly time to lobby governments.
  2. While the words democracy and transparency of the (NGO) process are considered most important, the atmosphere is one of conspiracy and backroom decisions.
  3. Nobody cuts anybody any slack concerning intentions, things that are said in the spirit of co-operation are taken in the worst possible way. Because we all come from different places, sometimes the words used to explain can be taken as disrespectful and/or offensive, even when that is not the intention at all. Everybody is completely willing to read a secret agenda into words spoken.

The biggest issue still seems to be who is most entitled to have their issue discussed at the WCAR. I think that this partly comes from the fact that problems of racism and racial discrimination targets very different groups in different parts of the world. But hey, can't we take a minute to listen to each other and, as a sign of mutual respect, stop trying to say what form of racism is worst? As far as I'm concerned all forms of racism and racial discrimination suck. The question now is how can we, in the little time that is left, get back to the original intention, combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance together in solidarity and with sensitivity toward each other.

*I CARE was created by UNITED for Intercultural Action and the Magenta foundation.

Suzette Bronkhorst


Videobite of the day:

Interview with Shimon Samuels from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Europe and member of the Jewish Caucus, about an open letter from Palestinian NGOs in Israel in which is said among other things, that the Jewish NGOs in Geneva work closely together with the Israeli government.

click here to play the RealVideo file.

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Today´s happenings

Today started as per usual with the NGO briefing. As promised members of the ISC were present. Renate Blom, president of CONGO announced that at 6 pm there would be a INGO meeting facilitad by CONGO, for the INGOs plus Caucus heads (it turned out to be a meeting for everyone), with as subject the NGO draft and a possible drafting commitee. Laurie Wiseberg told about the meeting of last Thursday with Mary Robinson. Out of concern for the financing of the NGO Forum, Ms. Robinson has committed 250.000 dollar to the Forum, of which 50.000 for the Youth summit, 100.000 for travel and accomodation and 100.000 for keeping the forum open etc. Pauline Muchina made a remark about the eminent persons. According to her they are a disgrace to the NGO community, especially the one from India, she stated that this person represents the governemnet, she has nothing to say about Dalits. She said that she wanted the High Commissioner to know this was unacceptable. Laurie Wiseberg suggested that it would be put as last part on the agenda of the briefing. After this Laurie turned the meeting over to Albert Terville, who stated that the ISC was present on request of the NGOs as to have face to face discussions with the ISC. He proceeded with Given Charles the floor to tell about the draft and the programme of action. Charles told that he had been working since Friday on the draft on submittances which were made untill Thursday night. He worked submissions from the following caucuses into the draft: Indegenous Caucus, Jewish caucus and Environmental Caucus. He furthermore stated that the draft is a very bulky docuemnt by now, 295 paragraphs. He is available in room 3015 to receive input from caucuses that still not made their input and will hold short meetings with heads of caucuses to see if the things were incorporated the way they wanted it. He continued saying that we will have lots of work in Durban, the present darft will be named working draft for Durban, a 'finilazed draft' that will go to Durban for translation soon as possible since 3 weeks are needed for translation. He reminded the meeting that we now have 22 Thematic Commissions (TCs) in Durban, with 3 rapporteurs who will fit into the drafting committee. That team will draw in all what comes from the TCs. Vera Eggenberger (ISC) asked about the Final Programme of Action on the Sangoco website, as it is rather unbalanced and wanted to know where this PoA comes from since it was decided that no more doceuments would be created/published/uploaded without a mandate.

Charles assured her that tonight the word 'final' will be removed. He also stated that he had sent his concern to Durban and that he had faith that the 'final'version of the PoA will be a working draft and that every darft we will receive will not be a final version but a working draft. Question from Pauline: what is the process of incorporating peoples submissions, what is your mandate on language, if we do not get it right and ensure there are enough people, by region, on the new drafting committee we will go through the same thing again, please explain. On this Charles repeated his words about the drafting and the TCs. Pauline and Renate Blom voiced some concern since TLs and caucuses are not the same thing. Renate said she would talk with the caucus heads about this and she will presnt the outcome of that to the plenary. Charles said that the commissions (TCs) represent some of the issues of the caucases and that we would have 2 opportunities to submit material to the 'ongoing drafting process'.

Remark by Alberto (ISC): Who will coordinate this. We are trying to get an ideal result with a imperfect process. Thousands of inputs are coming in. Someone else said: There are some conflicts that will not be worked out. What about an addendum claimimg or disclaiming the support? What happened to that idea? We need to know what the expectations are for the plenary in Durban before we go into it. What is our conception of consesus? Are we going to allow groups to submit an addendum? Albert: the ISC will discuss this. Another NGO rep. remarked: The NGO draft is a document for all NGOs it should not reflect the caucuses too much. Particapation in the caucusses will have to be more democratic. Linda, International NGOs Caucus: there is now a drafting commitee, we want 2 representatives on the drafting committee, since we have a global mandate. We feel that there has been lots of miscommunication so that is why the meeting at 6 pm will be, we want you all to know that you are welcome to ensure a democratic and transparent process. Albert: the ISC will discuss this. Request for clarifiaction: are the international NGOs not in caucuses? Answer: we work most issues on a global level, we have a global mandate. INGOs cover 100 countries and are not bound to countries. Since there are regional reps on the drafting committee to be we should also have global reps. Karen Mock (Jewish Caucus): An annex or addendum's purpose would be to disclaim the draft, but the original pupose was for the caucuses to present their own plan of action/ draft declaration in an annex. Someone: I understand that Charles made a compilation document without extracting language on which people can not agree, we need a consensus document. I want to say 2 points on the drafting of the Program of Action. Who is working on the POA? Who has the mandate? We need an answer on this question during this meeting. I want Imalka to elaborate on the draftiung committee. I am concerned about this evening's meeting. How we are looking at it. What is the position. I feel Charles should be involved and also the ISC, all of us need to be together as one group to talk about the drafting committee otherwise we will end up in 2 different camps. Charles: I have no mandate, my suggestion is that language which is missing is e-mailed to Sangoco so they can incorporate it (POA). Pauline: On emninent persons (see above) we should challenge or suggest: eminent persons should not represent govermnements or countires but only virctims.

Caucus and other meetings

The rest of the day several caucus and other meetings were held. One was a meeting of the so-called Goree initiative, a meeting of African intellectuals which had been held in Dakar to talk about slavetrade. On of the people present was the former Tunesian president Mr. Ahmed Ben Bella. This was a very busy, interesting and tense meeting with as subject Slave trade:Recognition and Reparation. One of the issues was that the African Intellectuals do not want to talk about the history of Slavetrade in africa itself, the so-called Trans-Saharan slavetrade and about still ongoing slavetrade in some African and Arab countries. They were called upon this during the meeting by Mutombo Kenyana who called their position revisionist and was strongly attacked for this. We will publish an article about this meeting in 2 or 3 weeks, written by Mutombo Kenyana himself.

The Oasis of Peace

At one there was a meeting organized by the Brahma Kumaris and 'Yes!', titled "Art of Making Peace". During this meeting there were several presentations, the most interesting one being by the two youngsters from Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the Oasis of Peace. Here Palestiniana and Israeli's have chosen to live together. Rami Mannaa, 17 years old, Palestinian and Omer Schwartz, 17 years old, Israeli, told about their village, the Oasis of Peace, in Israel. "Both nations want their place in the world. The situation is tense since negotiations started and lots of conferences were held. People have to understand however that an agreement is not enough if hate is still there. \\people will need to understand each other. This is what our village is about. Our village, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was founded in 1972 by Father Bruno Hussar, a clerk from a Jewish family who later changed his faith to Christianity. The village started as a Christian/Palestinian/Jewish project but later this changed into a Jewish/Palestinian project. The village centered on the Palestininan/Israeli conflict and a school for peace was founded to learn kids and adults about the complexities of the conflict, to give courses and to tarin local leadership. The village has a nursery, a kindergarten and a bi-cultural elementary school that teaches respect for each other. In our village we agree on many things and differ on others, but we can speak freely with each other and that is different on the outside. The problem right now is that we don't have a secondary school system. When young people leave the village, go to Palestininan and Jewish secondary schools, they sometimes forget the lessons of the Oasis of Peace" It was a wonderful and moving speech. Go look at the Oasis of peace at http://www.nswas.com/. We will be doing a short video-interview with Rami and Omer tomorrow.

Another kafkaesque meeting

Our working day ended with the meeting called by CONGO and the INGOs. To our suprise it was chaired by the ISC, we had understood that this meeting was to be an open talk with all prsent about the drafting process and to come up with drafters and a good procedure. Well, that was the subject. Sort of, anyway. Albert Terville of the ISC chaired the meeting and proceded not to answer any real important questions since they were 'to political', he stated he only wanted to talk about technical matters. The ISC gave a brief overview of how they wanted the drafting committee for Durban to look like: one drafter from each region to be proposed by the Regional Coordinating Committees, one from the International NGOs, 1 youth representative. There was a proposal for adding one ISC member to the drafting committee to monitor the process since it was not monitored enough by the ISC up till now, resulting in the controversial draft we have now. All in all the drafting committee would have nine people in total. Despite the remark about 'not wanting to talk about politics' (what else are we here for!), several people took the floor to talk about the problems surrounding the drafting process, especially the conflict over the strong and inflammatory language that was in the latest draft and the opposed positions of the Palestinian and Jewish caucases. Questions were posed but Albert did not want to discuss these, he did not react on most speakers and sometimes said that 'the ISC has noted this'. At a certain point he declared that he offered to sit with the Palestinian and Jewish caucuses together to 'solve their problems'. Other questions of substance he just did not adress, not even when NGO reps asked him to answer the questions. A few very good suggestions and questions (from Frej Feniche from the Secretariat, from Makani Themba and others) were ignored. This all resulted in most people leaving the meeting early, full of disgust. It very much resembled a meeting of an autocratic body like the central committee of the communist party. A number of Dutch NGO reps who had just arrived that day were astounded and outraged by the situation and were wondering what the hell was going on. Well, thats very simple, the ISC has decided on a course of action which they think is right, and they do not want to talk about this to the people who ultimately appointed them, namely we as NGOs. We should give them a course in democracy maybe?





























Quotes of the day:

You know what I really rather want? I want to be at a conference about peacekeeping. The Balkans. I really miss the Balkans.

Agree on many issues and differ on others and respect each other. That is possible!

Not only does youth have the future, they seem to take charge of the present.

You can keep on beating around the bush all you like but this needs to be addressed rather sooner than later or it will come back to haunt us in Durban!

This eminent person is only an eminent person outside of India!






Contributions by others: