COALITION OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN CITIES
AGAINST RACISM, DISCRIMINATION AND XENOPHOBIA
First Annual general Conference, Montevideo, Uruguay, 24-25 September 2007
The First Annual General Conference was held over a period of two days, September
24th
and 25th,
2007.
It was organized by
the City
of Montevideo
http://www.montevideo.gub.uy in coordination UNESCO’s Section for the Struggle
against Racism and Discrimination and UNESCO Montevideo.
While it was originally planned that this entire meeting would be a closed working
session of local authorities representatives, given the large interest it awakened, the City
of Montevideo and UNESCO decided, in addition to the working sessions, to add a
series of opening and closing ceremonial sessions, and also a series of panels and
lectures on issues related to racism, discrimination and general human rights issues,
drawing on the impressive array of experts present in Montevideo for the event. In
particular, international and national academic/civil society experts and representatives
of municipalities from the region provided valuable contributions to the event.
The Conference was divided into two days, with the first day being of a “ceremonial”
nature and the second made up of two components, an internal working “technical”
session for members of the Coalition, and a larger thematic event open to the public.
Day 1 (24th September):
The activity took place at the City Hall of Montevideo itself, in its ceremonial room, where
all documents, treaties, accords and other documents are normally signed and
approved. On this occasion, an official “protocol” or “memorandum of cooperation”
between the three main partners of the Coalition was signed.
While the Coalition itself had been created in October 2006 (see website) and close to
200 cities have joined it, the objective of this new tri-partite partnership was to give it an
official status and to institutionalize the future cooperation of the three partners in the