4th Meeting, 14th session of the Forum on Minority
Issues.
Victoria Donda:
Many situations of injustice were denounced in these intense two
days of debate and proposals. I will not list them. We took note
of the situations that were reported and of many of the proposals
that the participants were expressing. We also took note of the
considerations of the experts.
Some of the things we wanted to say in closing this forum are,
firstly, that we are convinced that discrimination and racism are
not, as we said at the beginning of this forum, a problem of
minorities and majorities, but of inequality in the access to and
exercise of power. We believe that this is fundamental, because
otherwise we can understand that discrimination and racism are
either individual behaviours or almost anecdotal behaviours in
the life and history of people. And the truth is that both
behaviours, which are violent behaviours and which lead to the
unhappiness for our people and societies, are behaviours carried
out by minorities that hold power. Racism and discrimination are
nothing but a form of violence. Only this violence can be
exercised from power and, therefore, the challenge for us is
working out how to democratise this power.
For us, an important part of thinking about this is to rethink
ourselves, to modify these paradigms, to talk, not about
multiculturalism but about interculturalism. It is to speak from
an intersectoral perspective, it is to speak from a gender
perspective.
Why do we say intersectoral and gender perspective are
necessary to change the paradigms in which we live these
situations of violence in different parts of the world? If we don't