States with a grievance sent senior representatives; states with a case to answer sent low-level delegations. The Europeans fought with the Africans and the Arabs. Israel and the US walked out. In the end there was an agreed statement, but not everyone agreed with it.

Before it came to an exhausted halt on September 9, the UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa left almost everyone dissatisfied.

"I do not claim that this conference has solved the problems of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," said Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, at the final session. "The issues have been addressed, not answered."

"But we have a framework. We have made a start and that is what counts."

"The true measure of our work will be whether it makes a real difference in the lives of the victims of racism and discrimination."

The conference acknowledged the massive human suffering caused by slavery and the slave trade, which are a crime against humanity and - it said - should always have been so. It asked states which are complicit in these historical injustices to find appropriate ways to apologize, and to show they mean what they say by supporting the New African Initiative and other innovative mechanisms, such as the World Solidarity Fund for the Eradication of Poverty.

"It is not surprising that the Middle East has played such a prominent part during the preparations for Durban and in the discussions here," Mary Robinson said. "Nobody could be unmoved by the human tragedy which continues unabated in the region."

The conference recognized the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state, and expressed concern about their plight "under foreign occupation". It called for respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, an end to violence and the swift resumption of peace negotiations.

But the Israeli delegation had already left.

Melodee Smith, a minister of the United Church of Christ and death penalty/victims' rights attorney in the US, led a WARC team of ten in Durban. In an oral intervention, Smith told the UN conference that "statistics show that the death penalty is racist and administered disproportionately to people of colour, that capital punishment costs several times more than incarceration for life and... [that] it is only the poor that get caged on death row."

On behalf of the WARC department of cooperation and witness, she organized an NGO forum on race, the death penalty and restorative justice. Panellists included Jesse Jackson, victims of racism, survivors of murder and violence, and internationally renowned human rights defenders such as Sam Jordan, formerly of Amnesty International and Rachel King, chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in the US.

But the US delegation wasn't there to hear them.

"We now have a series of concrete recommendations," Mary Robinson said in her closing remarks, "for national plans and programmes, for better treatment of victims, for tougher anti-discrimination legislation and administrative measures, for universal ratification and implementation of the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and other relevant international treaties, for strengthening education (a most important area), for improving the remedies and recourses available to victims, and many more. These are where our attention should now be concentrated. This is the work we have to do."

Páraic Réamonn