April 23, 2009

Two global church organizations have congratulated the Durban Review Conference on the adoption of its outcome document, while regretting that the latter makes no mention of the plight of hundreds of millions of people affected by caste-based discrimination. In a joint oral intervention at the conference today, The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) welcomed the reaffirmation of the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, as well as the international community's commitment to overcome all forms of racism "in all parts of the world, including those ‘under foreign occupation'."

However, the two global church groupings regretted that the conference "failed to acknowledge the suffering of the more than 200 million people discriminated against on the basis of work and descent." Formerly known as untouchables, the Dalits are "invisible" in the document, despite their situation falling squarely under the definition of racial discrimination by UN standards.

One month ago, both organizations convened a conference in Bangkok (http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1722/accompanying-dalits-in-th.html) on that subject. On that occasion, representatives of churches and church-related organizations from around the world expressed their solidarity with the Dalit struggle for justice.

The two global church groupings welcomed the proposal made by the High Commissioner for Human Rights of creating an "observatory on discrimination," which may help throw further light on the situation of the millions of victims of untouchability practices. There are some 260 million Dalits worldwide, 200 million of them in India.

Another welcomed development is the exclusion of the concept of "defamation of religions" from the conference outcome document. By not allowing the concept to "inappropriately intrude into [the document's] human rights framework," the document instead "properly addresses itself to the ‘stigmatization of personsbased on their religion or belief,'" the two organizations stated.

Full text of the WCC/LWF oral intervention at the Durban Review Conference: http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=6810.

Learn more about WCC work in solidarity with Dalits: http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3249.

World Council of Churches