Our small dinner party by the Tevere river in front of the one surviving monument to Mussolini (as a grim reminder of an earlier fascist regime) was graced by Antonia and friends. Antonia is in her late sixties and comes from a long tradition of peace activism from way, way back.

Antonia, that day on July 24, had just come off a 50,000 strong peoples' 'manifestation' or protest in the heart of Rome to denounce police violence on July 21 at the G8 summit in Genoa, dubbed 'the city of Christopher Columbus'.

That fateful weekend saw the tragic death of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani, son of a labour union activist. Giuliani was shot in the head and the police vehicle reversed over his body before driving over it again.

July 24 saw simultaneous protests in all major Italian cities including Genoa. The municipality of Genoa requested for the resignation of the police chief.

Antonia's husband is one of a team of 32 independent film producers who went to Genoa. The 36 speeches of community leaders on globalisation alone took 16 hours of film. The speakers were from all over and spoke in all languages, he said.

He thinks the team clocked a total of 190 hours of film which will be put together in a documentary by October this year. He felt it important to record the politics and issues affecting communities the world over as a result of globalisation and monopoly capitalism. Media coverage of violence would overshadow the real issues of anti-globalisation protests, he added.

Civil society shut out

Antonia was especially riled by the carabinieri (paramilitary police) beating up sleeping activists. The police stole into the building housing activists on the evening of July 21 in Genoa and beat up activists in their sleeping bags. They then carted away film, videos and documentation belonging to the activists and lawyers. More than 50 activists were badly injured in that incident.

Antonia and friends express grave concern at the new leadership (Italy had a change of government the year before) which they say failed to stop the Black Bloc protestors who came into Italy as tourists and mountain climbers in buses across the northern border of Italy. Police set up road blocks only to stop ordinary Italians to Genoa, they say.

Vittorio Agnoletto, spokesperson for the Genoa Social Forum and a university professor, reportedly lost his job and the financial assistance for his research was retracted by the Italian government after the G8 event.

The Genoa Social Forum is a well-respected umbrella group and one of the organisers of the peaceful protest in Genoa. According to Antonia, this adds to the reasons for the nationwide protest of July 24.

Genoa 2001 raised concerns of shutting out civil society in economic forums of governments. NGOs and community groups shut out of decision-making processes would manifest their concerns any way they can.

On July 23, the President of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Claudio Moreno, in his opening address at the Informative Session for (Italian) NGOs for the World Conference Against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), echoed similar concerns.

Moreno, who will chair the third and final preparatory meeting to WCAR from July 30 to Aug 10 in Geneva, testified to his government's policy of civil society participation in co-hosting the two-day informative session where NGO representatives of the regions were also invited.

Test of wills

Globalisation (monopoly capitalism) has been identified by the Asia-Pacific NGO Declaration of Tehran-Kathmandu as a root cause of racism.

In the meeting in Tehran in February this year, the NGO working group on globalisation and racism noted that economic summits like the one held in Davos (and now Genoa) undermine efforts by the world community, including civil society groups, in negotiations at the United Nations (UN). These summits are aimed to circumvent the already weakening mechanisms of international accountability in the UN.

The spill from Genoa to Durban where the WCAR will be held, is not unlikely.

However, very few of our own governments in the Asia-Pacific region have thought about involving civil society in discussions of government positions on issues at the WCAR. Civil society groups have to deal with their own governments in the UN fora. Many governments will not fund local participation at these meetings.

While few governments in our region may take issue with the Asia-Pacific NGO position on globalisation and colonisation (neo-colonisation and 'the West' arguments of governments), the test of wills will come on specific issues at a national-level action plan on WCAR. It is not too late to check if we have actually got a national action plan and that we have seen it.

National action plans are vital as local implementation becomes the most important agenda especially when governments fail to ratify significant human rights instruments and related optional protocols which hold them accountable at the international level.

The signing and ratification on UN human rights instruments remains open. One of the principal instruments to the WCAR is the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd). A country's first commitment to the objectives of WCAR would be ratification of Icerd.

Our Human Rights Commission (Suhakam), in its first report to Parliament, has not included in its recommendation for ratification Icerd, although it has noted Icerd as a major human rights instrument.

This is an unfortunate oversight which should be remedied in view of WCAR this September.

Win some, lose some

At the last UN World Conference for Women in Beijing in 1995, Malaysia ratified, with reservations, the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw). We should be lifting these reservations and signing the optional protocol to Cedaw as part of a national action plan to address gender issues and racism.

The second meeting in May (Geneva), saw the issue of caste (Dalits in India and Burakumin in Japan) being thrown out at the behest of the governments of India and Japan. Caste is a theme of the Asia-Pacific Declaration. Caste affects some 260 million people in our region.

All regions, NGOs and some governments (except for the Zionist lobby) are lobbying for Palestine to be adopted as a special issue and country in the WCAR as South Africa was so adopted in the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 (Vienna). The lobby will continue right through Geneva to Durban.

Italy appears well-prepared, at least on the globalisation front. Its head of delegation, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is two weeks into the job from a post in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In his closing address in the Informative Session for NGOs on July 24, he omitted making a reference to the Asia-Pacific NGO Conference input (with globalisation as a main item) while noting the concerns of the Americas and Africa.

Such is the way of international lobbying. You win some, you lose some. Human rights are traded as if a commodity on the floor of the UN. Standard setting is important no doubt, in order that governments can be made to account to a declaration and programme of action arrived by consensus. However, Geneva, New York and Durban are just too far away.

For many of us here, perhaps it would have been more constructive to have the report on the Petaling Jaya Selatan racial clashes made known for public contemplation and debate.

This course may well be the better and more strategic participation between the state and our civil society come WCAR this September.