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Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, welcome.

Welcome to the 5th UNESCO Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination.

Your Majesty,

it is a profound honor and privilege to welcome you to the opening of this 5th Global Forum.

Your presence here today gives special significance to our gathering and to our shared commitment to equality and human dignity.

Ambassador Nahar Khan, Dean of the diplomatic Corps,

a very warm welcome to you and to the diplomatic community represented here today.

The Honourable Prime Minister Rob Jetten,

we are particularly pleased and honored by your presidency today at this important international gathering. Mr.

Walter Goetz, King's Commissioner in the province of South Holland, and Mr.

Jan van Zanen, the honorable Mayor of the city of The Hague, a warm welcome to you,

indeed, in your international city of peace and justice.

I'm also delighted to welcome the Minister's Plenipotentiary of St.

Martin and Aruba, Her Excellency Ms Gracia Arendel, and Her Excellency Ms Mildred Schwengler.

A special and really a special warm welcome to His Excellency Mr.

Gregory Rusland, Vice President of the Republic of Suriname.

We Sir, I am really honored by your presence, but also by your participation in the global forum today,

and I also warmly welcome the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Mr. Pieter Heerma and the State Secretary Mr.

Eric van der and And of course, a warm and warm welcome to Brussels,

to Brussels, the EU Commissioner Lahbib, warm welcome to you. And Mr.

Hirman I deeply appreciate your genuine commitment to combating racism and discrimination.

Your engagement as Minister of Home Affairs and your determination to address these challenges are of great importance,

and I must say that, as national coordinator, I feel strongly supported by your leadership and your commitment to this cause. Thank you very much indeed.

Your Excellencies distinguished representatives of national and international organizations and institutions,

the private sector.

Politics, sports, the academia, dear delegates, guests of honor,

and all distinguished participants, to all of you.

Who traveled from across the world to join us here today in The Hague,

your presence reflects our shared conviction that racism and discrimination are challenges we must confront together.

Dear friends, More than 4 centuries ago, William Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar,

and I quote, Men at some time are masters of their fate.

The fault, dear Bruus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that is what our underlings.

These powerful words remind us that human beings are not merely subjects of destiny.

We have the power to shape our own future, and that is precisely what we are gathered here today.

Racism and discrimination, dear friends, are not written in the stars. They are not inevitable.

They are embedded in systems,

institutions and structures that human beings are created and sustained by human beings.

That humanity has created Humanity has the power,

that responsibility to change it.

Dear friends, in 1948,

the United Nations proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Here in the Netherlands, in the Kingdom of the Netherlands rather,

Article 1 of our Constitution guarantees equal treatment and prohibits discrimination.

This our First Amendment represents something even more profound.

It recognizes that human beings are different, different in beliefs,

backgrounds, identities and ways of life.

It recognizes that difference, respects diversity and protects equality,

because equality does not require us to be the same.

It requires us to be treated with equal dignity and respect, and that is, my dear friends,

the fundamental promise of human rights, which is fortunately embedded in our First Amendment, Your Majesty.

Yet the reality tells us a different story.

According to the United Nations,

1 in 5 people worldwide reports having experienced discrimination in the past years. 1 in 5.

Behind that figure are millions and millions of people whose dignity,

opportunities and fundamental rights are being undermined.

Despite decades of international declarations, conventions and action plans,

the gap between our commitments and people's lived experiences remained far too wide.

Shakespeare captures a profound sense of disorder in Hamlet when he wrote,

The time is out of joint. The time is out of joint.

Indeed, something is profoundly wrong when equality is universally proclaimed,

yet discrimination remains deeply rooted in our societies.

But unlike Hamlet, We cannot afford to despair. At the responsibility of setting things right. We must embrace that responsibility.

We must act, and this, dear friends,

requires political courage, Prime Minister, institutional responsibility. And measurable results.

It requires It requires us to move beyond good intentions and confront the system that perpetuates inequality, because equality cannot remain an aspiration, it must become a reality,

and that is the essence of our theme at this UNESCO global forum from commitment to accountability,

change the system, change the future.

Over 2 days, leaders, policymakers, experts, civil society, grassroots organizations, representatives and young people from across the world will come together to identify concrete solutions,

but the true measure of our success will not be what we say here in The Hague.

It will be what we change when we return home.

Your Majesty Excellencies, dear friends, let me return once more to William Shakespeare.

In The Tempest, António reflects on the relationship between the past and what is yet to come,

declaring, and I quote, What's past is prologue. What's past is prologue.

Our history has shaped the world we live in.

The legacies of colonialism, slavery, and historical injustice continue to influence our societies and institutions today,

but the past need not determine our future.

We cannot rewrite that past or our history.

We can, however, change that system that perpetuates its injustices.

We can decide what kind of world we leave to future generations, and let The Hague be remembered not simply as a place where the world gathered to discuss racism and discrimination,

but as a place where the world committed itself to change that system that sustains them.

Shakespeare reminded us that we are masters of our fate. The future is there.

The future is therefore not something we should merely await.

It is something we must shape because the future will not change itself. We must change the future. Thank you.

It is now my great pleasure to invite on to the stage our distinguished co-host,

Åsa Regnér, Deputy Director of UNESCO.

UNESCO has long been at the forefront of the global struggle against racism and discrimination.

Its founding principles remind us that peace, equality and human dignity must be built not only through international agreements,

but also through education, science, culture and international cooperation.

Dear friends, please join me in welcoming the Deputy Director General of UNESCO, Ms. Åsa Regnér. Thank you very much. Your Majesty Your Excellencies. Your Excellency Mr. Rob Jetten, Prime Minister.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear young people, dear friends.

It's a great pleasure to welcome you to this 5th edition of UNESCO's Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination here in the beautiful Hague,

a city that has become a symbol of the pursuit of justice.

Your Majesty,

we are very honored by your presence here today and thank you for your leadership in relation to the issues that we will discuss today.

I do wish to thank the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and particularly Rabin and the Office of the National Coordination Against Immunination and Racism,

for hosting this forum, for the hospitality and friendship and close partnership with UNESCO.

The Netherlands has been a frontrunner in the combat against racism and discrimination and in deconstructing the historical role it played in the slave trade and the generational trauma it caused.

I also wanted to say that the fact that so many showed up today,

it really gives a lot of hope in times that can sometimes feel.

A bit gloomy and concerning, so thank you so much for that.

Despite more knowledge and research on racism and discrimination,

there is right now a backlash against anti racism initiatives.

There is also a backlash on human rights, international law,

gender equality, civil space and civil society organizations in the world.

This shows that awareness and understanding alone are, unfortunately not enough to create meaningful change.

We must use existing facts, learn from each other's experiences,

share effective strategies and show leadership.

All of this is necessary to challenge racism.

By truly working together,

we can address resistance and promote a more inclusive and equal society.

This is why this year's theme, from commitment to accountability,

change the system, change the future matters.

We must identify what perpetuates discrimination, who can change it, and how to measure progress.

UNESCO has, and you heard a little bit about that, pursued this mission since its inception.

Imagined in the midst of World War II,

the organization emerged from a simple yet powerful conviction that hatred is learned and can therefore be unlearned.

Education, research, facts, freedom of speech, freedom of culture, expression, etc. Are vital parts of this.

Later in the 1950s, UNESCO brought scientists together to challenge racial prejudice.

Its 1978 declaration on race and racial prejudice affirmed the equal dignity of all human beings.

At the same time, and also that we heard a little bit about, in 2022,

as much as 45% of people of African descent surveyed in the European Union reported experiencing racism,

45% compared with 39% in 2016, which was already very high.

Discrimination Does persist in attitudes,

practices and institutions and is increasingly amplified online.

Racism and discrimination also remain significant barriers for women. Particularly women of color.

Women from racial or ethnic minorities are twice as likely as men to experience discrimination,

according to the UN's global discrimination data.

To counter this, UNESCO's first line of action is education,

where prejudices can be challenged before they take root.

Our recommendation on education for peace,

human rights and sustainable development provides a solid normative framework for this purpose.

Our very recent toolkit against racism and discrimination supports the development,

implementation and monitoring of anti racism and anti discrimination policies.

Also, UNESCO's masterclasses against racism and discrimination have reached more than 2000 students who have made significant changes in their communities by creating observatories,

social media campaigns, and theater plays.

We have furthermore,

trained over 100 educators and policymakers to confront anti Semitism in and through education.

This year we have launched a new program with the European Commission and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to address racism.

And discrimination targeting people of African descent, Jews, Muslims, and Roma people.

Schools should help build our understanding of history, but we need to help them to do so.

That is also why our partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has expanded education about the Holocaust,

genocide and violent pasts across 30 countries.

Through the General History of Africa program, enriched by three new volumes in 2025,

UNESCO tries to help bring African history and the contributions of its diaspora into classrooms.

Our Routes of enslaved peoples program further connects 32 places of history and memory in 14 countries.

Also, through reparatory justice dialogues, very important, and a forthcoming toolkit on this specifically,

we support truth telling, recognition and practical approaches to repair.

We pay attention to how racism intersects with other forms of discrimination and how emerging technologies can exacerbate these patterns.

In 2021, UNESCO adopted recommendations on the ethics of AI. That was quite early. Nowadays this is on everybody's mind.

These guidelines on the ethical use of AI help governments prevent biases from being embedded in technologies and decisions,

hopefully today in our current times, but also for the future.

We are also examining how generative AI facilitates gender based violence,

and this is actually a very forceful development that we need to be very aware of,

while supporting women's and girls' participation in science and technology.

These challenges demand responses across education, public policy and digital governance.

For women and girls, as well as LGBTQ communities,

discrimination can be compounded by race, disability or social background.

As the Deputy Director General, with responsibility also for UNESCO's global priority gender equality,

I and my team and all of UNESCO take this very seriously.

Addressing racism and discrimination requires us to test whether our policies are working,

and that is where accountability begins. We need to see and measure results.

In Barcelona in 2024, UNESCO launched the Global Alliance Against Racism and Discrimination,

and today I am pleased to open its call for membership and invite governments,

cities, universities, civil society, young people, and the private sector to join.

The alliance will link 4 areas of action 1, a norms and standards hub to strengthen policies, 2, an equity data lab to examine inequalities,

3, a global anti-discrimination academy to build capacities, and 4,

Voices Against Racism to give communities, especially young women and men, a greater say.

Here in The Hague, we will advance a structure to measure racism,

a draft framework for the reparatory justice toolkit that I just mentioned,

and a pilot study on the economic cost of racism too.

These tools can show where policies actually do fall short,

or maybe where they are absent, and what needs to change.

So, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the measure of our success will be, as we already heard,

what changes concretely after this forum in classrooms, workplaces,

public services and the technologies shaping our future.

I will certainly try to do my part. Thank you so much. Please, please, please for your chicken. Thank you.

Excellency,

thank you for your inspiring words and for UNESCO's continued leadership and commitment to advancing equality and human dignity worldwide.

Your message reminds us that international cooperation is indeed essential if we are to transform our commitments into lasting change.

Delegates attendees here of this global forum, the Netherlands is proud to host this 5th UNESCO Global Forum.

Hosting this forum is not only an expression of international solidarity,

it is also an acknowledgement that the fight against racism and discrimination requires commitment and responsibility at the highest levels of government.

Political leadership matters, because changing the system requires more than good intentions, it requires vision.

Determination and the courage to turn principles into policies and policies into results.

We are therefore particularly honored that the Right Honourable Prime Minister is joining us today to reaffirm the importance of this shared commitment.

Distinguished guest, please join me in welcoming His Excellency, Prime Minister Rob.

Your Majesty Excellencies, Ambassadors, distinguished guests, a few months ago I visited the Black Archives, a unique historical archive and cultural center in Amsterdam,

which includes more than 20,000 books about racism, slavery and colonialism, about gender and feminism,

about Suriname, the former Netherlands Antilles, about Africa, South America, and a great deal more besides. It's an enormous and impressive collection.

But even more striking than its size is what it symbolizes.

The glaring lack of different perspectives in our current books,

school curriculums and academic publications.

You have known this for a long time, and you know what a void this has created.

After all, mutual understanding and the sharing of knowledge and ideas are the basis for peace, security and progress.

They are the very foundations on which UNESCO has been built.

But the equality at the heart of that mission does not yet extend to everyone in society,

not by a long way, and the statistics don't lie.

Here in the Netherlands, 1.6 million people experience discrimination and racism in their daily lives.

When they're at work or in a hospital or at house hunting. At a sports club or at schools.

That's a sobering statistic,

and one that demands only one conclusion there is still a lot of work to be done.

As Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom, I feel a special responsibility in this regard.

4 years after the Dutch Government apologized for the Netherlands' role in the history of slavery, we are working towards recovery.

With this apology, we are writing not a full stop, but a comma, we said, because the echoes of the past continue into the present, and not just in the lives of the descendants of enslaved people,

but in those of everyone who still faces discrimination and racism today,

and we are working together with all affected communities to explore what comes after that comma.

As well as setting aside EUR 200 million for initiatives related to the history of slavery,

we are joining with those communities to develop a national roadmap towards recovery.

Communities across the countries of our kingdom and the former Dutch colonies,

and we are working to ensure that this period of history gets its rightful place in our educational system.

We're taking a long and hard look at our cultural heritage,

or perhaps I should say, what is not our cultural heritage.

We've already returned many artifacts to Nigeria, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and we're working closely with Ghana too,

but there's more historical inequality that needs to be addressed in our international institutions,

for example, where African representation needs to be increased.

I realize, of course, that acknowledging past injustice is not enough.

Today as well, human rights are under pressure around the world. You see that every day.

The current climate is pretty bleak for those who champion equal rights,

whether it's the rights of women, the LGBTQI community, religious groups or people of color.

In more and more places, extreme groups are pushing an agenda filled with hate, both online and in the real world,

and institutions that were established to protect us all are under severe pressure.

Yet I refuse to see these times as an unavoidable downward spiral,

because anyone who knows their history knows that the path to equal rights and progress never runs smoothly.

You have to navigate the bombs and the potholes before you can climb to your ultimate destination.

That takes a lot of perseverance, and we need dedicated people to keep digging us out and pushing us forward,

people like those brave human rights defenders and journalists who too often have to risk their lives in order to do their vital work.

This forum, these two days here in The Hague gives me hope, because UNESCO combines global reach with direct ties to society,

and thanks to the programs and initiatives that arise from its national commissions,

I have every confidence that the coming days will boost their efforts even further.

The Forum's theme from commitment to accountability, really hits the nail on the head.

After all, it will always be necessary to defend hard won rights,

but now it's time to take the next step.

We need to render account for our actions and the results that we achieve and create an effective structure for doing so.

This means governments need to acknowledge that we have blind spots and ask for help in identifying them.

I'm delighted that the Netherlands can count on the dedicated professionals,

like our national coordinator against discrimination and racism, Rabin Baldersin,

and his team to help us do that.

For the past 5 years, not always easy years,

they have been using their sharp insights and broad expertise to help build a public sector that's there for everyone.

Of course, this work is never finished, but it speaks volumes that our Minister for Interior and Kingdom Relations,

Peter Scherrer, is here today and tomorrow, because no one can do this alone. We need each other.

Politicians, policymakers, academics and civil society organizations, in fact,

the very people that gather here these two days in The Hague.

So seek each other out these two days, share ideas and experiences in the finest UNESCO tradition.

I wish you all a very successful event. Thank you.

Prime Minister, thank you very much for your important words and for reaffirming the Netherlands' commitment to combating discrimination and racism,

and thank you very much in acknowledging me and my team, as your partner.

Your presence today underlines the importance of political leadership in making equality and human dignity a reality for everyone. Thank you very much indeed. And now, dear friends, let's go.

Beyond our borders, and at this point I would like to acknowledge the presence not only you here gathered today with many,

many people, but also, 10 thousands of people watching online. Good afternoon good morning to you all. Bonjour, Gareth Morgan, buenos dias. Fazakas Namaskar Salamwaleko.

Because our next speaker represents an important dimension of our collective responsibility,

the role of Europe in promoting equality and protecting fundamental rights and combating discrimination.

The European Union, dear friends,

has an essential role to play in ensuring that the principles of equality and non discrimination are reflected in legislation,

policies and institutional practice.

Our next speaker has been a strong advocate for human rights, equality and international cooperation.

It is therefore my great and great pleasure to welcome Her Excellency,

Ms Hadja Lahbib, European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management. Your Majesty, Your Excellency's, colleagues, dear friends.

I'm delighted to be with you today, and many thanks to UNESCO and our Dutch hosts. Angela King. Do any of you know her? You won't because she never existed. But she came very close. She was almost me.

Before politics I was a journalist and when I was starting out someone gave me a friendly advice.

Change your name, they said, call yourself Angela King, it will make things easier. And they patted me on the back. I was born in Belgium's coal mine.

At 12, my father was a shepherd in Algeria. He couldn't read or write.

He arrived in Belgium in 1947 and went down the mines. I kept my name. But I never forgot that friendly advice.

That is how systems often work, quietly with a pat on the back. That's how doors stay open for some. And stay shut for others.

For every person told to change their name, countless others simply never get that apartment,

that bank loan, or that job interview.

Racism is not a relic of the past.

It's a system that keeps producing the same outcomes generation after generation as if on auto pilot. But there is no autopilot.

Behind every closed door is a person making a choice.

Earlier this year, we adopted Europe's first ever anti-racism strategy. Racism closes doors. This strategy is about throwing them open.

It moves us from tackling individual prejudice to dismantling the barriers built into our systems.

People must feel this tragedy in their daily lives.

So we are working with all of you, our member states,

civil society, equality bodies, international organizations and people who live with racism.

15 EU countries now have their own action plan against racism that is twice as many as in 2020,

but we want all the 27.

Today Allow me to focus on 4 areas of this strategy.

First, we need to see the system clearly. You cannot fix what you can't see.

So we are supporting EU member states to develop a working definition of structural racism.

It will help public authorities recognize barriers they may no longer notice.

We are also preparing a recommendation on equality data to see who is being left behind.

Roma people live around 8 years less than the average European. We only know that because someone counted. Our 2nd priority is partnerships. No single institution can do this alone.

Not even one with 27 member states behind it.

So thank you to the Netherlands and to UNESCO for your partnership that is already delivering on what we teach our children and what we choose to remember.

Racism indeed is learned, so it can be unlearned, and school is the place to start.

In parts of Europe, one Roma child in 2 still sits in a segregated classroom.

Our joint project addressing racism in and through education launched this year.

It helps teachers spot stereotypes and respond to them,

and it is built with young people and the communities who live with racism.

We all support research and protect places of memories.

Last week I visited Lettu Oiscu in Czechia.

Under Nazi occupation, Roma and Sinti families were locked up there.

More than 300 died, most of them children. Hundreds more were sent to Auschwitz.

It was a painful reminder that racism can destroy whole peoples. My 3rd area is enforcement.

A right that cannot be enforced is not a right.

Our latest report on the Racial Equality Directive tells us that only 5 to 11% of people facing discrimination will report it.

Many stay silent because they don't believe anything will change.

It's a trust problem, and trust is rebuilt through enforcement. So we are closing the gap in.

How the Racial Equality Directive works on the ground and in people's access to justice.

New EU rules make equality bodies stronger and better equipped to spot discrimination built into systems.

Enforcement also has to reach the digital world.

And algorithms that screen CVs or scores alone application can reproduce racial bias at scale and in silence.

The AI Act and EU anti-discrimination law make sure these systems respect fundamental rights. Racism still kills today.

Last Friday in Trappes near Paris, a gunman drove through the streets shooting at people,

killing 1 person and injuring 5 others.

He told police he wanted to attack black people and Arabs.

We are also stepping up the fight against hate speech and hate crimes.

Rights must protect people online as firmly as offline.

Under the Digital Services Act, we are working with platforms to tackle illegal hate speech. Our 4th priority is civil society. None of this works without you.

You see the barriers that institutions miss because you work where racism actually happens.

Our anti racism civil society forum connects what we decide in Brussels with what happens in your communities.

Your independence and your voice matter, especially now that civic space is shrinking.

And of course partnerships need money behind it.

Since 2021,

the EU has put over €140 million into fighting racism.

In our next EU budget, the Commission proposed to more than double the funds for democracy,

rule of law, and equality via the Agora EU program.

Your Majesty, Excellencies, dear friends,

Let me come back to Angela Lo.

The person who invented her looked at the world as it was.

And told me how to get by on it.

Change your name Make yourself a little smaller.

No one in Europe should have to shrink to succeed.

We should do the opposite and help each other grow into giants.

My father could not read or write, his daughter now stands before you with the name he gave her. Thank you.

And that's what happens when a door opens.

Somewhere in Europe, a young woman is writing her first CV.

And I want her to put her real name at the top without a second thought. So let's change the system.

Then the only friendly advice left to give will be this keep your name,

it will open door and you will grow it into a giant. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Lahbib,

thank you very much for your valuable contribution and for highlighting the importance of European cooperation and responsibility in the fight against discrimination and racism.

Your message really reinforces a central conviction of this forum equality must be protected,

not only through principles and declarations, but indeed accountable actions. That is indeed. A very important thing.

OK, let's proceed, ladies and gentlemen, and by the way. Bill Davis is in the house. Welcome Thank you for joining us today.

Distinguished guest, before introducing our distinguished keynote speaker,

allow me to make a brief protocol announcement.

Immediately following the keynote address, His Majesty the King and the Prime Minister will be leaving the auditorium.

There will be a short pause, not a break, a short pause.

Yeah, I don't want to see you leaving.

A short pause to allow the delegation to depart, after which the program, of course,

immediately will continue, and thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Dear Friends, it is now my great honor and privilege to introduce our distinguished keynote speaker,

Professor Kimberley Crenshaw. Nice meeting, right?

Professor Crenshaw is one of the world's most influential legal scholars and thinkers on race,

gender and social justice.

As a pioneering scholar of critical race theory and a scholar who introduced the concept of intersectionality,

she has fundamentally transformed the way we understand discrimination and structural inequality.

Her work has shown us that discrimination cannot always be understood through a single lens Race, gender and other dimensions of identity intersect,

creating forms of inequality that our institutions or legal systems too often fail to recognize,

and that is precisely the challenge at the heart of this global forum.

Dear friends, please join me in giving a warm welcome to our distinguished keynote speaker, Professor Kimberly Crenshaw. Good morning.

Your Majesty, Excellencies, Prime Minister,

Director General, friends, colleagues, and Bill Davis.

What an honor to be in community with so many visionary, change-making people this morning.

My thanks to the national coordinator against discrimination and racism, Robin Balasing and his team,

to UNESCO, to the Kingdom of the Netherlands for bringing this forum to fruition. I accepted this invitation with sheer joy.

UNESCO rests on a simple premise that I share, that knowledge, memory,

and culture are shared inheritances that help us learn how to live together in peace.

Its constitution, written in 1945,

acknowledges that war had been made possible by the doctrine of inequality of men and races.

This institution was built to answer that condition with education, science, and culture.

For 8 decades, UNESCO has put those values to work,

bringing scientists together to challenge claims of racial superiority,

advancing international commitments against discrimination in education.

And working to preserve the cultural and social archives through which people know their histories.

The late Jesse Jackson recalled carrying UNESCO's research through the American South during the civil rights movement to challenge the claims of black inferiority.

Yet this precise work is now under attack.

In July of last year, the Trump administration announced that it's leaving UNESCO,

allegedly because it quote works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and pursues a globalist ideological agenda.

Apparently, like the civil rights movement that Reverend Jackson championed,

teaching peace and justice through our shared humanity is now a divisive cause.

So too are the concepts of intersectionality and critical race theory,

terms that I coined to contribute to the understanding of how our social world works.

Yet advancing peace, mutual understanding,

and respect for human rights are precisely what is under attack.

To advance the upside down logic that less knowledge is better, censors are pulling books from school libraries by the thousands. And these are not random choices.

Of the 3,743 distinct titles that PEN America documented as being banned in public schools in the United States,

disproportionately,

these books feature people or characters of color and LGBTQ plus people and characters. State lawmakers have gone so.

Far as to restrict what might be taught about race and injustice, federal officials have also targeted the words used to describe injuries and to construct remedies,

words such as bias, race, racism, gender,

women, black discrimination, and intersectionality.

The repression of critical ideas and the attempts to dismantle institutions like UNESCO place us all on the same side as we push back against the global shift away from the 20th century's humanistic commitments.

Repudiating an inglorious past and seeking greater equality among us has been a touchstone of liberal institutions since the mid-20th century.

Those who attack this work know that social literacy advances justice,

advances stability, advances equity.

We must be clear-eyed about why authoritarian forces across the globe are attempting to outlaw and ban certain words like intersectionality.

They attack this term not because it's valueless, but because of the valuable work it does.

Intersectionality is not a grand theory,

it is a practical prism designed to draw attention to dimensions of social disempowerment.

That conventional legal systems, international treaties, and government bodies have historically overlooked.

It offers citizens a way to decode power, exposing how inequality operates beyond explicit intent,

beyond individual bias, and beyond isolated and exceptional cases. At its core.

It is a lens that makes visible the interactive dimensions of social disempowerment that institutions sometimes pretend do not exist.

Ultimately, intersectionality is a reflection of lived lives.

My own thinking about intersectionality didn't start in a law faculty office,

in a comfortable university study, or in an abstract academic retreat.

It started in my childhood as a black girl growing up in Canton, Ohio,

navigating a society that had not yet decided whether or how it would embrace people like me.

As a young girl, I experienced the thoughtless devaluation that targeted black girls,

a burden that had no name or place in the litany of racial injustices being protested across society.

But my need to understand it planted a lifelong imperative to name the injuries that conventional categories keep hidden.

I later came to intersectionalities through studying law, and I met on the pages of a law journal,

Emma DeGraffenreid and four other black women who sued General Motors over a seniority system that carried over earlier hiring discrimination into a new round of layoffs.

The company's defense against Emma DeGraffe Reed, we hire women, look at the front office.

We hire black people, look at the factory floor.

What the court did not see was that the women's jobs were held by white women and the black jobs were held by black men.

There had been no place in the structure for black women to stand.

The years of exclusion now counted against them when they asked the court to consider race and sex discrimination together,

their demand for protection was treated as a demand for preferential treatment. The court's frame made their injury invisible.

It made me wonder how might I be able to get them to see.

I began to draw overlapping roads to form intersections. Judges navigate through intersections every day. I thought.

Perhaps an intersection would help them see what they missed.

Picture a workforce structured, made up of two roads crossing.

Employment employment politics traveled through those roads as their traffic.

Emma, by virtue of her gender and her race, stood in the intersection of these policies. She was hit. By both directions.

Now suppose 2 ambulances arrive, anti-racism and anti-sexism,

but each can only treat the injuries from its own stretch of road.

When they cannot tell which traffic caused the accident, they simply shrug and drive away.

That's how institutions double down on intersectional injuries.

First, they structure policies that create the condition, and second, the remediation overlooks that problem.

The vulnerabilities are intersectional, the remedies are not.

Intersectionality then offers a wider lens into both of these problems.

The wider lens might help us think differently about the role of institutions in creating inequality,

denying harm, and frustrating remediation.

First,

we must shift our entire paradigm from chasing bad actors to auditing institutional design.

Exclusion and inequality are rarely the preserve of individuals who set out with explicit malice to discriminate and to harm.

More often,

exclusion is the predictable consequence of well-meaning institutions operating under unexamined defaults.

It is produced by administrators, policy makers, leaders who simply haven't thought deeply or at all about how their rules,

algorithms, and daily operations land on people who live at the intersection of multiple margins. Take for.

For example, a case I discussed in mapping the margins.

A woman was fleeing a husband who was trying to kill her,

but she was turned away from a shelter because she spoke limited English and could not partake in their empowerment consciousness raising sessions.

She was spending nights on the street while the shelter was resisting allowing her teenage son to translate for her,

arguing that that would further victimize the victim.

By the time they finally found a shelter who could take her, she stopped calling.

No one knows whatever happened to this woman.

When an institution assumes that everyone it serves operates with the same language, the same wealth,

the same physical mobility, the same legal status, it's unexamined rules become instruments of harm.

We have to stop treating compound exclusion as an unpredictable accident and start holding institutions accountable for failing to anticipate the needs of multiply marginalized people.

Second, we have to unmask and dismantle the background systems of inequality that society treats as natural or just there.

Intersectional vulnerability is so often hidden under patterns of disempowerment, but when institutions treat the background conditions, whether it's poverty, economic debt, caste hierarchies,

or the gendered labor of unpaid domestic work as static, unchangeable scenery,

it has made itself unable to see the intersections that drive harm.

When I was asked to prepare a background paper in preparation for the World Conference Against Racism,

I looked across the planet for examples of intersectionality.

One that stood out for me was the violence experienced by Dali women collecting water at community wells.

It's frequently framed just as anti-caste violence, but it is intersectional because you see,

it's only women who have to carry that responsibility to collect that water and you see it.

In the areas of underdevelopment where people have to travel miles to collect water,

this is all the product of multiple intersections of caste,

of gender, of underdevelopment, of a history of colonialism.

We have to challenge the lie that background inequality is neutral and force our systems to recognize that these inequalities are those that create intersectional disempowerment.

Lastly,

we have to move to a moment where we enforce an affirmative public duty to recognize compound harm and make transparent the data that exposes it.

We can't dismantle that which we refuse to measure,

and we cannot heal injuries that institutions actively choose to hide.

Across Europe and North America, we see a dangerous political push to retreat behind a color blind or single axis veil,

but hiding data does not eliminate racism or sexism,

it merely renders the victims invisible and denies movements the evidence needed to demand justice.

An intersectional protocol requires governments and institutions to collect, cross tabulate and publicly release data disaggregated by race,

gender, class, disability, and citizenship across health,

housing, labor, justice, and education systems.

When an institution makes intersectional data transparent,

data ceases to be a cold academic exercise.

It becomes an irreplaceable instrument of public truth telling,

legal accountability, and life saving intervention.

So let me end now where I began with this institution.

70 years ago, another government left this organization because in its own words,

UNESCO's publications were interfering in its racial affairs.

It was the apartheid government of South Africa,

and it took the end of apartheid to bring the country back to UNESCO.

At the end of December, my own government is scheduled to withdraw from this institution again.

Defending UNESCO and its work means defending the knowledge it was created to make available.

We have to be willing to use that knowledge when it exposes failures in our own institutions and to contest a rule that excludes someone else even when that rule may admit us.

The intersection where Emma DeGraffe Reed stood was a site of injury.

In too many places today, the ambulances still drive away without her.

The task of this forum, from commitment to accountability,

is to change what happens to the people left in those intersections.

Their injuries must be seen, counted, and repaired,

and institutions charged with protecting them must answer when they fail to do so.

Before we can change the system, we have to be willing to see it.

Widening the frame is the first act of accountability, as Tammy Baldwin reminded us,

not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. Thank you.