A/HRC/7/36 page 16 96. Another proposal was to find prominent individuals who could act as champions to promote the work of the Working Group, not only in States with a significant number of people of African descendant, but also globally, as proposed by Professor Jabbour. 97. A short number of very sound legal and technical recommendations was another method suggested to aid in facilitating the implementation of the Working Group’s recommendations. Item 5 (c): Discussion of the work plan adopted earlier by the Working Group Deleted from programme of work. Item 5 (d): Improvements, major challenges and new manifestations of racism and intolerance since the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban 2001 98. Dr. Georges Jabbour presented a paper on improvements, major challenges and new manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and intolerance since the World Conference against Racism. He spoke of the fact that Durban had left a tangible impact on the way people looked at racism, stressing that it was self-evident that there was now a larger body of national and international documents that dealt with racism. He also highlighted the rise of Senator Barack Obama to the status of a real presidential contender as evidence of improvement. However, he stressed that, regardless of some improvements, there was still a lot left to do. Dr. Jabbour also spoke of the new threat of religious hatred and Islamophobia, which he stressed was evident in today’s world as well as in the situation of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. 99. He stated that action still needed to be taken on the national, regional and international levels. He stressed that, in order to acquire momentum prior to the Conference, it was perhaps useful for the Office of the High Commissioner to request all States and regional organizations to submit their overdue plans of action and for the Office to disseminate them. Justice in the wider sense of equality should be the motto of the work on racism as preparations were being made for the review conference, where justice in strict judicial terms should prevail over diplomacy. Dr. Jabbour also stressed the importance of reparations and cited his own document entitled “Some personal thoughts on reparation and people of African descent” as an example of how the issue of reparations could be addressed. 100. There was wide agreement with Dr. Jabbour; several observers agreed with his suggestions regarding the raising of awareness of combating racism and reparations. 101. An observer who chose to elaborate on Dr. Jabbour’s analysis of Islamophobia emphasized the importance of encouraging an historical reconciliation between Islam and the West. Concerns were raised regarding whether efforts to combat Islamophobia should be focused on the grassroots of the population or only on the elite. 102. There was also an observation that Dr. Jabbour’s reference to presidential candidate Barack Obama as a sign that there was improvement in the situation of people of African descent were overoptimistic. It was stated that one should not confuse personal achievement, in Mr. Obama’s case, with improvement of the masses.