Discrimation & Conflict

Discrimination is the denial to some members of a state or society certain rights and/or privileges which other members enjoy. The term connotes an unfavorable treatment of some people based on the legal description, conviction or assumption that they are supposedly more likely to possess negative attributes. Discrimination as such, in most cases, if not in all, is a source of national and/or international conflict. The constitutional system and its subsidiaries are built and practiced on the assumption of the superiority of some and the inferiority of others. In time, the privileged become more privileged, and the deprived become more deprived. The conflict will tend to persist until the discimination is eliminated.

All the United Nations organs dealing with human rights have been actively involved in the struggle against discrimination. However, not only all forms of discrimination are not yet eradicated, but the international community is experiencing new, mounting waves of bias, exclusion, racism and violence. Hence, the need to struggle against all forms of discrimination is more obvious now than before.

The International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD) is an international human rights organization, affiliated with the United Nations, whose philosophy and activities are grounded in the principle of equality in dignity and rights for peoples and individuals. EAFORD has been active for more than two decades as an independent, non-governmental organization dedicated to the upholding and promotion of struggle against discrimination. Its composition is multi-ethnic, multi-religious and international in character.

Türkkaya Ataöv, the author of the present volume entitled Discrimination and Conflict, is a professor of international relations and a member of the central Executive Council of EAFORD. Several of this author's works, which received various academic and governmental awards, were previously published by EAFORD's bureaus in London, Montreal, Paris and Washington, D.C. This monograph, initially suggested to him by the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, treats many kinds of discrimination as sources of conflicts.

 

Prof. Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv

Haarlem, SOTA, pp. 161 ISBN: 90-804409-3-04