Human rights activists from Latin America met in the Brazilian capital of Brasília in June to talk about and evaluate the efforts regional governments have made toward eradicating racism and discrimination. The conference is part of an ongoing process initiated by the landmark 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa.
The purpose of the Brasília conference was for activists to strategize and prepare for the official Durban Review Conference (DRC) scheduled for April 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland. The DRC is charged with reviewing the progress made in the final declaration against racism adopted in Durban.
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The Brasília Civil Society Forum was unique from the start. Greeting the activists was Edson Santos, Brazil’s minister of the Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, or SEPPIR—a government level ministry that promotes equal rights. His presence stems from the Brazilian government’s co-sponsorship—along with several UN agencies—of the Forum.
Sponsorship of the Civil Society Forum was a daring risk in itself. Representatives of Israel, the United States, and Canada have routinely claimed that Durban was merely a racist forum that blamed Israel, in particular, for the problems in Palestine. Canada has already declared it will boycott the DRC. The United States, France, Israel, and England are currently threatening to do the same, particularly since Libya is the elected chair of the DRC’s preparatory committee. Also causing friction among these countries is that Cuba serves as the DRC committee's rapporteur and Iran is an executive member.
The controversies surrounding Durban and its follow-up conferences have led critics to accuse or raise questions about whether the various entities behind the process are promoting “anti-Semitism” by even holding the event. Brazil took on that risk, in part, because it gave the government an opportunity to boast about the advances it says Brazil has made in promoting racial equality.
In March 2003, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva created SEPPIR, a ministry with an annual budget of about $22 million. “It was one of the first things president Lula’s government did,” says Edson Santos, the current head of SEPPIR. “Durban told governments they needed to do more to promote racial equality. That spurred the Black Movement and through their pressure they insisted on the need to create SEPPIR.”
Describing its mission, Santos explains, “We were created as a special secretariat, devised to advise the government about ways to improve things like healthcare and education.” He adds, “We are designed to make sure that the government’s plans are cross-cutting, so that they provide services to everybody, and so that there is racial equality throughout all sectors.”
Because of SEPPIR, Afro-Brazilians have been awarded more than 100,000 educational scholarships, the ministry has developed programs for health care in Black communities, and policies are finally being implemented to give land titles to the families of those living on Quilombo lands.
Quilombos are communities originally established as free territories by Blacks who escaped from slavery. Today, those lands remain inhabited by their descendants. Providing ownership titles to these lands is SEPPIR’s main push right now. Since its creation, the ministry has made assistance to the Afro-Brazilian families on Quilombo lands one of its central priorities.
 Edson Santos (left), Brazil’s SEPPIR minister, explains his organizations goals with the help of his translator. |
Through its program “Citizenship Quilombo,” SEPPIR works to provide “access to land, health, education, construction of housing, electrification, environmental rehabilitation, social assistance and encouragement of local production.” Local farmers and agribusiness groups are fighting these efforts, because the “Citizenship Quilombo” program could take valuable land tracts off the market. So far, only 30 Quilombo communities have received land titles, while some 1,600 are still waiting for titles from the national land management agency.
Yet, even with all of these advances, Brazil still faces many serious challenges in confronting racism. Afro-Brazilians themselves are still often reluctant to embrace their African heritage, even though some sixty percent of Brazilians are of African descent.
“Many people know they are Black, but too often Blackness is still associated with negative things,” explained Antonio Cosme da Silva of the Terreiro do Cobra, a religious organization based in Salvador da Bahia. “So, instead, they use their individuality as a strategy to overcome racism.”
“There’s two things you can do,” suggests João Carlos Noguera, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, “understand Brazil or make Brazil into something you can understand. In our country, Blacks and whites live together. We were taught that we have had legal equality since 1890. We didn’t have Jim Crow or Apartheid; our restrictions have been economic and in terms of citizenship rights. This is where our struggle is.”
The Durban Plan of Action affected other countries in the Americas, as well. Afro–Costa Rican congresswoman Epsy Campbell Barr recalled, “Initially, the fight against racism was an Afro-descendant concern. But now other groups—the indigenous, the LGBT, Palestinians, immigrants, the Rom, Jewish communities, religious groups and more—have become part of the discussion. Groups that were somewhat dispersed have now coalesced to unite in the fight against discrimination.”
Campbell Barr, who is also the founder of the Black Parliament of the Americas (and some say a likely presidential candidate in Costa Rica’s next election cycle), noted: “Governments have gone from total denial of the problem—stating that there was no racism—to total commitment to attacking the problem. Many have supported agreements that in the past had been ignored. Many of our social leaders have been welcomed into government discourses since Durban. Governments have made efforts, but they have not advanced far enough—they are not combating racism forcefully enough. And there’s no real social pressure for change.”
Members of African American and Afro-Canadian groups also took part in the Civil Society Forum. “Even if our governments have chosen not to participate in this Forum, we remain engaged in the process,” Margaret Parsons, the Executive Director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic of Toronto, Ontario told those in attendance. “Durban was a watershed moment for us and for communities that have historically suffered. The enormous diversity that exists in North America demands no less than that we demand a strong anti-racist agenda for our region and for our region to be an example for the rest of the world.”
Karen Juanita Carrillo is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer and photographer. She co-founded the website AfroPresencia.com and serves as the senior researcher with the UN-affiliated International Oil Working Group.
