World

March 21: Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

by Amy Judd | March 21, 2009 at 12:53 pm

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Each year on March 21, the United Nations marks the day in 1960 when peaceful protesters were shot by police in South Africa when they were demonstrating against apartheid there.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says that the massacre in 1960 represents the millions of people that are today still victims of racism and racial discrimination.

“Racial discrimination denies its victims the most fundamental of all human rights – the right to equality,” she noted in her message for the Day.

“Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are insidious, corrosive and sometimes explosive forces that devastate the lives of many individuals and, if left to fester, can undermine societies as a whole. They present a threat to security and often feature among the root causes of violent conflict.

“Taken to an extreme, unchecked – or deliberately fuelled – racial discrimination and intolerance can lead to ethnic cleansing and genocide,” she added.

In 2001 governments got together to pledge steps that will eradicate all racism, and in April those governments will meet again to see how far they have got in those pledges.
There has not been as much progress as they had hoped.
In some countries there has been a rise in hatred and bigotry and racism.

“Displays of intolerance abound, from small gestures in interpersonal relations to large-scale violence targeting people of different skin colour or ethnicity. In particular in times of a global financial crisis, intolerance tends to become even more pronounced, fostering racial, ethnic and xenophobic tensions.”