Writing now from a tentative founding meeting of a Latin American caucus, also attended by representatives of the Caucus of Africans and Afrodescendants, created yesterday. One of the latter has proposed to formulate four points of unity for a joint statement:
1. Slavery
2. Reparations
3. Afrodescendants should establish a permanent network, which should be financed and institutionalized
4. Governments should be held accountable on progress re 1 & 2
The 100+ scheduled 3 minute NGO speeches in the General Assembly should have started by now.
I find it amazing how narrowly focused most of the reporting on the conference seems to be in the Western press -- it is as if after Ahmadinejad's speech, nothing else going on here mattered at all. At the very least this completely neglects the information/networking value that many of the meetings have for those who can only attend such meetings every eight years if at all - but also the very real diversity of opinions and expectations, which are not limited to either the Middle East or to genocide.
Among many other factors, this narrow focus is probably due to greater access to information and other resources among those focused on Israel/Palestine etc - unlike others, they do not feel the need to treat the conference as an information-gathering event.
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