Anti-Racism and Diversity Week: Our past and future collective responsibility

For the last few days, my organisation European Network Against Racism Aisbl (ENAR) has collaborated with Members of the European Parliament animating the European Parliament Intergroup on Anti-Racism and Diversity (ARDI), and the European Commission to host the Anti-Racism and Diversity Week in the European Parliament . I can only thank my team and their counterparts in the two institutions who have worked hard to find us inspiring and challenging speakers, to create moments and spaces for networking and dialogue, to share a wealth of content to feed our minds, and to enable us to express our anguish and our hopes for a better future.

It's only the beginning of a much longer conversation that could have lasted weeks.

I celebrated my second year at ENAR, joining the team at a challenging time that has only gotten tougher. In my concluding remarks yesterday, I shared with participants we face a choice, between being held hostage by pain and trauma, or instead transforming this trauma by supporting each other and leveraging our collective strength to make sure that every life lost in unjustifiable violence is honoured by working to heal together. Because a future lived apart is no future at all, and our speakers underlined there is a collective, historic responsibility and moral imperative to address racism as part of an unjust legacy that we all have inherited.

We also gave our participants, and indeed those committed to this cause tools to prepare ourselves for a major milestone in our struggle. ENAR's manifesto supports the re-establishment of a strong ARDI after the upcoming EU elections and I am thrilled to have witnessed ARDI members are taking extra steps to ensure that this will happen. We will be by their side to do that. ENAR is championing a strong public manifesto which lays out 10 actions which can serve as a roadmap for change for our Europe.

I championed our roadmap for change as a balanced, affirmative, realistic manifesto calling for the revival of civic space in Europe's democratic space, calling for a Europe that is safe for all, looking towards the challenges of tomorrow by proposing concrete actions to address the effects of climate change and the digital revolution on marginalised communities.??

It is a manifesto of hope - but also one of action.

Last year, we reflected on how we make Racism History, how do we make sure that by the time we retire (if we get to retire). Mila Paspalanova , the Anti-Racial Discrimination Advisor at the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights underlined that there currently exists more than 9000 recommendations to address systemic and structural racism that have yet to be effectively implemented. It’s high time to start them becoming a reality so that we don't feel like the issues of 25 years ago come back again 25 years from now. Systemic issues require systemic solutions, and part of the system is political representation. Let's work to address this - and so I ask each one of you to go to ENAR's website to discover our manifesto and our asks, to identify a candidate, and to convince them to sign up to it, and all other manifestos from our sister equality movements who face the same challenges as us.

I thank Commissioner Helena Dalli and ARDI for their efforts to bring to life the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan championed by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and rally current MEPs to champion our manifesto's spirit and raise our collective awareness of what we are calling for. We're going to need every peer we can get in the political environment that is shaping to make our work championing Europe's values difficult.

We also bore witness to the physical attacks and psychological intimidation facing activists. Civil society is under attack - our champions of pluralistic democracies, bridge builders, our moral conscious, the voice-givers of those not heard. Yet civil society is an essential prerequisite to a healthy democracy. Without the countless volunteers that animate these spaces of cooperation and collaboration, our world would be poorer for it.?

Civil society can federate different perspectives even when they are very far apart, they are the eyes and ears on the ground that can detect tensions and help resolve them, they are the ones who through their dedication, their innovation, their passion and love for the human condition can help communities to heal, to restore justice, to learn, unlearn and relearn new ways of living together, to fill the gaps left behind by other actors.?

But civil society can only exist in an enabling environment, and we must redouble our efforts to ensure that that environment will continue to exist. Civil society cannot operate effectively when our members face physical threats and must clean up after bombing attacks that target their premises. Civil society cannot operate when governments target civil society for being too vocal or inconvenient and hit them with fines, administrative threats, defamation, and barriers to funding that threatens their very existence. Civil society cannot operate when they are more preoccupied with keeping the lights on rather than doing the essential work. Civil society cannot operate when our volunteers and employees are personally attacked on social media to the point that our people fear to make a stand. Civil society needs its partners to safeguard a space where voluntary and grassroots organisations are celebrated for their contribution to society - where legal protections are effective, where the independence of civil society is guaranteed, where funding enables long-term working, where we stand together to change narratives and systems. An attack on civil society is an attack on us all.?????

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MEP Pierrette Dr. Herzberger-Fofana opening remarks affirmed it is possible to live in a world of peace, justice, and solidarity. I can only agree, we are privileged to live on a continent which is the living proof of it - emerging from the horrors of the Holocaust to become a self-declared project of peace, unifying countries that had only known hatred for one another, building for its people a new path. A future where people see less and less differences within the Union among its nationals, even if that reality is still imperfect especially for racialised commlaurels, and individuals. Indeed, we cannot rest on our laurels and we must acknowledge that today’s Europe also is very much the result of historical and still ongoing exploitation of racialised individuals and communities.

The Anti-Racism and Diversity Week highlighted poignantly that our history has both unintended and willful gaps that must be acknowledged and repaired. In the end, if United in Diversity is Europe's motto, then Anti-Racism and the work we do is not only essential for the European project, but also its DNA and to ignore it is to imperil all that has been achieved to date.??