A/58/313
which brings together artists and non-professional footballers of European and
immigrant backgrounds.
31. The Special Rapporteur hopes that FIFA’s and UEFA’s measures will put a stop
to racism in football stadiums. He wishes to encourage the International Olympic
Committee and the International Tennis Federation to adopt similar measures. He
plans to mobilize the international community regularly against the plague of racism
through his reports to the General Assembly of the United Nations, to list explicitly
any incidents which come to his attention and to say what steps the relevant
sporting, national, regional and international bodies and the States Members of the
United Nations have taken. In that connection, he will ask world sport governing
bodies to work with him actively and continuously.
C.
Racism connected with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
32. Recalling that the Durban Declaration strongly condemned “the increase in
anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in various parts of the world, as well as the
emergence of racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory
ideas against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities” (para. 61), the Special
Rapporteur wishes to draw the attention of the General Assembly to occurrences of
racism connected with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
33. The conference organized in Vienna in June 2003 at the initiative of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) found that antiSemitism was on the rise in Europe, Central Asia and North America. The
2002/2003 report of the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University, which was
brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur, indicates a worrying increase in
anti-Semitic acts throughout the world during the period it covers.
34. Urgent attention should be focused on this clear resurgence of anti-Semitism,
with wide-ranging debate in the General Assembly and the Commission on Human
Rights on the origins and contemporary manifestations of the phenomenon, so that
lasting solutions to the problem can be found, using as a basis the relevant
international instruments and the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
Such a debate, to which the Special Rapporteur would contribute regularly through
his reports, would make it possible to gauge how far the revival of one of the oldest
and most destructive forms of racism and racial discrimination had spread. To that
end, the Special Rapporteur has already begun in-depth consultations with the
appropriate figures and institutions, in order to gather precise and objective
information.
35. As a prelude to the report on the situation of Muslim and Arab peoples in
various parts of the world in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001
which he is due to present at the sixtieth session of the Commission on Human
Rights, the Special Rapporteur wishes to draw attention to certain manifestations of
racial discrimination affecting such individuals, as reflected in his preliminary
report on the subject (E/CN.4/2003/23).
36. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that Islamophobia, an ideology which
preaches hatred and rejection of Islam, seeing it as a malevolent force whose most
dangerous expression is terrorism, continues to be spread through channels
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