A/76/434 images of the violence were ever-present and made it difficult to ignore the human cost of the conflict. 99 84. The mention of the conflict between Israel and the State of Palestine in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action should not be equated with an antisemitic preoccupation with Israel, as is done by some commentators. In the two mentions of Israel in the document, Member States affirmed Israel’s right to security and its capacity to resume the peace process and to “develop and prosper in security and freedom”. 100 85. Although a minority of Conference participants engaged in antisemitic rhetoric and actions, objectionable language was discarded owing to the dedicated engagement of the vast majority of participants, and the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was created as a mutually acceptable compromise. The document reflected international consensus, and, within its paragraphs, Member States denounced all forms of intolerance. 101 Future engagement with the document should be focused on the actual content of the document, not debates about language that never made it into an adopted text. 86. Some commentators and civil society actors have suggested that the disengagement of certain States was driven not just by their stated concerns of anti-Israel bias, but also by a deep discomfort with the discussions of reparatory justice inspired by the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. 102 While this reasoning has never been confirmed, it is true that the disengagement of a vast majority of the world’s former colonial and slave-trading powers has deeply affected the momentum for reparatory justice for the victims of these structures and their descendants. 103 87. Efforts to abandon the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action contradict the strong consensus that was reached at the conference and weaken the human rights framework devoted to combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. V. Recommendations 88. The Special Rapporteur calls on Member States: (a) To re-engage with the Durban process and avoid taking positions calculated to erode the importance of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action as a global anti-racism framework. The Special Rapporteur encourages all actors to refamiliarize themselves with the content of the document and to use it as a starting point for further development of anti-racism commitments. She emphasizes that efforts to discard the document only detract from the global momentum for racial equality; (b) To adopt a structural and comprehensive approach to countering racism, which entails not only individual and group wrongs, but also the __________________ 99 100 101 102 103 22/26 McDougall, “The World Conference against Racism”, p. 135. Declaration, para. 63; and Programme of Action, para. 151. E. Tendayi Achiume, “Governing xenophobia”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 51, No. 2 (March 2018), p. 349. Submission on the international round table on people of African descent; and Abigail B. Bakan and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “The Israel/Palestine racial contract and the challenge of anti-racism: a case study of the United Nations World Conference against Racism”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 44, No. 12 (2021), pp. 2180–2181, quoting interviews with Durban participants. Abigail B. Bakan and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “The Israel/Palestine racial contract and the challenge of anti-racism”, p. 2182. 21-15325