The Netherlands pulls out of UN anti-racism meeting over Israel

The Netherlands, Italy and the Czech Republic will not attend the celebrations for the 10 year anniversary of a UN anti-racism treaty in New York in September because of Israel, the foreign ministry said in a statement.


The Durban declaration was the result of a conference in the South African city in 2001, and aimed to combat racism, hatred of foreigners and discrimination.
The Netherlands and the other two countries want to include a section in the final document of the September meeting which states subjects not related to the original treaty should not be included.

Israel

This is because some countries consider the Middle East peace process to be central to the discussions and use it to deny Israel’s right to exist, the ministry said.
Because this guarantee was not forthcoming, the Netherlands feels forced to pull out of the preparations and the celebrations themselves, the statement said.
The Netherlands also boycotted the last UN anti-racism conference in 2009 because of the Israel issue.

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