O ASTERISCO

Racism is an instrument in the generation of conflict, the fomenting of exclusivist nationalism, and a motor for the disintegration of states and slaughter among neighbours.
Governments, political movements, and violent armed groups continue to use racial discrimination as a tool for the political mobilization, oppression, and even extermination of others.
Whole populations may be denied the full prerogatives of nationality in their own countries – or stripped of their citizenship by political fiat – because of their race or descent. Racism can also intersect with gender discrimination, to diminish or negate women’s exercise of their human rights.

As economic globalization, regional economic crises, and political upheaval have stimulated movement across national borders, migrants and refugees in particular are assailed by new measures of discrimination on an enormous scale.
Trends in human population movements and toward an increasingly international labour force make it particularly urgent to address racism as a factor in the generation and management of migration and refugee flows and in its relation to domestic and international conflict. Woman migrants suffer particularly, in trafficking and forced prostitution, in the lack of protection in the work place, and in constraints on family life imposed by migration and the specter of statelessness.

Government policies and practices may have a pernicious discriminatory effect even where discriminatory intent is not clearly established. Such public policy and administrative practice can effectively bar members of groups defined on racial or related grounds from enjoyment of their fundamental human rights no less than do systems of overt discrimination.

The atrocities of apartheid, genocide, slavery, caste-based violence, and what has come to be known as “ethnic cleansing! are at the extreme end of the spectrum of racial discrimination. So too is the discriminatory treatment of indigenous peoples that threatens their very survival. Progress in international justice to fight impunity for these extreme forms of racism, and in international action to protect vulnerable populations gives us new tools in the campaign toward its eradication.