Preparations
The conference was authorized by United Nations General Assembly Resolution #52/111. Prior to the conference various preparatory meetings (PrepComs) were held in order to identify conference themes and to create initial drafts of the Declaration and Programme of Action. These PrepComs encountered difficulties from the start.Michael G. Schechter (2005). United Nations Global Conferences. Routledge. pp. 177–182. ISBN 0-415-34380-1.
The first problem was the question of what the conference theme was to be. The Western European states, along with the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, all wanted the conference objectives to be those given in the authorizing resolution. The Africa Group, the Latin American states, and the Caribbean states wanted the conference objectives to go beyond what was in the resolution, and include items dealing with regional, national, and international measures for compensation for colonialism and slavery.
Prior to the conference, there were also four Regional Conferences, in Strasbourg, Santiago, Dakar, and Tehran.
Read more about this topic: World Conference Against Racism 2001
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—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)