Doudou Diène

Doudou Diène (2nd from left) with members of the Auroville International Advisory Council

Doudou Diène (* 1941 in Senegal ) is a Senegalese political scientist and was the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism and Xenophobia from 2002 to 2008 .

Life

Diène studied philosophy and political science and obtained a doctorate in law from the University of Caen in France. From 1972 to 1977 he was Deputy Senegalese MP at UNESCO and Vice President of the Group of 77 , after which he worked in the UNESCO Secretariat. In the following years he was mostly responsible for intercultural and interreligious projects.

In 2002, Diène was appointed UN Special Rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Committee. In this role, Diène investigates racist or xenophobic incidents in the signatory states of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the reactions of their governments. During a visit to Switzerland in January 2006, for example, he spoke of xenophobic tendencies because “the defense of national identity is becoming increasingly important in political discourse and in the media” . He also said that there was "a significant number of incidents in which police violence had a racist tinge" in Switzerland . Diène reports annually to the Human Rights Committee and the UN General Assembly .

In his report to the UN Human Rights Council of February 20, 2008, in the follow-up section with regard to Switzerland (he also made statements on Russia, Italy and Japan), he warned against an increase in racism, which is becoming more and more democratic. Questions about immigration, asylum and the situation of foreigners and minorities would increasingly be reduced to security issues. The right to freedom of expression is used as an instrument to legitimize xenophobic attitudes.

Diène is a member of the International Advisory Council of the experimental city of Auroville in India.

Web links

• Doudou Diène on the website of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (PDF file; 26 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): Current and Former Mandate-Holders for Existing Mandates, Valid as of 1 May 2019
2. ^ Switzerland in the pillory swissinfo.ch in the Human Rights Council , 19 September 2006
3. ↑ Reference: Report, submitted by Doudou Diène, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (for Switzerland see No. 13 to 17 of the report, from page 6 of the PDF download 97.3 kB)
4. ^ The International Advisory Council (IAC) , Auroville, July 4, 2019.