Some things never change.
(CNS News) — The U.N. on Thursday commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Durban anti-racism process, an enterprise that has been marked by years of acrimony over efforts to single out Israel as racist. More than a dozen Western democracies boycotted the event.
Meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly session, the gathering adopted, without a vote, a text reaffirming countries’ “political commitment to the full and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action.”
The DDPA is the document that emerged from the original World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. It has been at the heart of the decade-long Durban controversy, since it identified “Palestinian people under foreign occupation” as victims of racism. No country other than Israel was targeted in the same direct way.
Some human rights advocates deplored the fact that the Israel-centric focus — part of an international campaign to label Israel an “apartheid” state — has upstaged other pressing situations around the world such as Darfur, where up to 300,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, died in fighting between black African rebels and the Arab-dominated regime and its militias.