Latin America has been chosen as the first venue for a series of regional conferences in preparation of the Durban Review Conference (“Durban 2”) to be convened in Geneva from 20 – 24 April 2009. This review conference will build on the outcomes of the UN World Conference against Racism that was held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

The first preparatory conference will be convened in Brazilia from 17 – 19 June 2008. A civil society forum of Americas preparatory to Durban review will be held in the same city from June 13th –15th, 2008.

The preparatory conference and civil society forum will set a precedent for the entire process and ultimately for the Review Conference itself. It is important, therefore, that progressive Latin American governmental actors and civil society become actively involved based on their long experience with the struggle against racism and colonialism.

The process towards “Durban 2” is already highly contested. The world’s imperial powers, with the United States and Israel at the forefront, are putting pressure on states, members of the Human Rights Council and the preparatory committee to dilute the agenda and to silence the principled voices of the victims of racism that shaped the agenda of the civil society conference at Durban in 2001.

The United States have boycotted previous World Conferences Against Racism in response to criticism of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. In 2001, the US and Israel withdrew from the Durban Conference, because civil society had identified Israel's regime as a form of apartheid and called for a concerted campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and because the US was unwilling to address is own record of slavery, racism and colonialism.

However, if racism and discrimination are to be tackled, the root causes must be addressed. State-sponsored racism must be eliminated and effective reparations must be provided to the victims. The struggle against Israel's colonial apartheid regime is one of the cornerstones of the struggle against state-sponsored racism and ongoing colonial policies worldwide.

The Palestinian people are victims of the world’s last state-sponsored colonial apartheid regime. This regime is maintained by dozens of racist laws and military orders which deprive Palestinians of their fundamental rights to their homeland, and collective punishment is applied on a massive scale in order to oppress Palestinian resistance. Israel has imposed a hermetic closure on the occupied Gaza strip and is starving its people. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians are deprived of their land and water by Israel's Apartheid Wall, ever-expanding Jewish colonies and a system of Israeli-only roads and forced to live in walled-in “Bantustans” and ghettos. For sixty years now, over 7 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced and forbidden to return to their homes, simply because they are Palestinians. At the same time, Jews from any place in the world are entitled to live and become citizens on Palestinian land under Israel's law. Both strong popular mobilization and the NGO forum in Durban ensured that the truth about Israel's apartheid regime was exposed and space was provided for

many other just struggles for justice and equality around the world. Today, Israel puts all its efforts into reversing and delegitimizing the concerted struggle against racism.

We urge you, therefore, to make a strong effort for participation in the Durban Review process and the meeting in Brazilia, to put pressure on your delegates to ensure proper representation of the people, their organizations and the core issues of the struggle against racism today.

Knowing that we share a history of struggle against colonialism and racism with the people across Latin America, we have full confidence in your active support of the Palestinian people.

In solidarity,