For a Diverse and Plural Millenium
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Towards a Different World

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel¹

The challenges of human and social liberation in this millennium are huge, as overwhelmed as our peoples are due to inequality, intolerance, exclusion, and violence. Racism and discrimination are still marking the present and future of entire peoples. Indeed, although the suffering provoked by five centuries of colonialism, slavery, and spoliation, they helped to orchestrate; they continue expressing themselves in our societies, with incredible force, impelled by power – domination.

However, there are also abundant signs of hope, to the extent that peoples stand up to face the struggle for their dignity and future, based on their own identities and histories. Innumerable deep rivers spring to the surface from Chiapas to Tierra del Fuego, silently growing and opening today new possibilities of Life.

The UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Forms of Intolerance becomes a new milestone in this journey of peoples pursuing the enforcement of their rights and to put an end to public practices and policies that systematically lead to their violation.

From the Americas, we must insist in ending genocidal neoliberal policies that, through their cultural, economic, political, and military impositions, increase inequality and discrimination and lead to massive death. Among other proposals, we must demand the abrogation and rejection of the Foreign Debt, and insist – jointly with the friendly peoples of Africa and Asia, on the restitution and reparation of Social, Historical and Ecological Debts, of which we are legitimate beneficiaries.

We are facing a valuable opportunity to advance together, respecting the great diversity of the human family, on behalf of so many needs, rights and utopias that are common to us all. Together we can make a different world.

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