The administration recently announced it would boycott the United Nation’s Worlds Conference against Racism. Those who refuse to take the time to understand the facts would discount this as a debacle of the current administration that would continue the cowboy ways of the Bush administration and its lack of prowess at international relations. The only part the critics would get right is that Obama’s administration has taken the same stance as Bush’s; the bush administration walked out in the middle of the conference in 2001.

The World Conference against Racism, racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related intolerance is being hosted in Durban, South Africa. Excluding the conference to be held this year, it has been held three times previously. The conference primarily focuses on the trafficking of women and children, gender and racial discrimination, and the protection of minority rights. Along with the United States; Canada, Israel, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia have so far announced they are boycotting the conference. For a conference whose agenda is to eliminate some of the worlds worse atrocities and to promote great ideals, why would so many countries boycott? Simply put, the conference does not hold itself accountable to the tenets of its creation. Much like the United Nation itself, the conference is grossly ineffective and wasteful.

The conference has become a venue for countries to verbally spar with one another over past transgression, in hopes to satisfying their own immature shortcomings. Rather than focusing on solutions for the future, the conference attendees are focused on digging up controversies of the past. The 2001 conference saw the African countries unite in an effort to receive individual apologies from countries that were involved with slavery. Additionally, they wanted countries to be recognized as having committed crimes against humanity, and wanted to receive reparations from such countries. Regrettably, these kind of actions were consist throughout the conference’s and has absurdly not been recognized as a formula for disaster. A draft resolution was created during the last conference that singled out Zionism, the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state, as racist. Ironically enough, a movement is afoot today of the same sort, the establishment of a Palestinian state, that has not been dubbed racist.

The Obama administration has been more proactive than the previous administration in engaging the international community. The administration has also shown its wisdom in continuing the tradition of the Bush administration and positioning the country as a steady friend to her allies by refusing to participate in a conference that would single out Israel as a country based on racism. By refusing to participate, the conference lacks the credibility necessary to enact real change, change that would most likely see monetary reparations paid to third world countries for acts of the past. President Obama with this act has staunchly apposed holding the world of today, accountable for the world of the past, a world many centuries old.