EVENTS were held across the world today to mark the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The annual occasion was set up as a reminder of the continuing fight for racial equality and the devastating consequences of racial and ethnic discrimination.

In 1979, the UN general assembly adopted a programme of activities to be undertaken during the second half of the decade for action to fight racism. 

On that occasion, the assembly decided that a week of solidarity with peoples struggling against racism and racial discrimination, beginning on March 21, would be organised annually in all member states.

The date marks the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa in 1960, when apartheid-era police opened fire on peaceful protesters against the brutal racist settler regime’s discriminatory laws, killing 69 people. 

The theme for 2024 is: “A Decade of Recognition, Justice, and Development: Implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent.”

The theme is linked to the International Decade for People of African Descent, which ran from 2015 to 2024, and recognises that racism and the legacies of slavery and colonialism continue to destroy lives.

Ahead of this year’s event, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said: “Racism is an evil infecting countries and societies around the world — a deeply entrenched legacy of colonialism and enslavement.

“We must respond to that reality, learning from, and building on, the tireless advocacy of people of African descent.”

The workplace remains one of the front lines of the struggle against racism.

Global union Public Services International said it was important to decolonise labour regimes by understanding “racial capitalism and its control over labour, coloniality of power and the fallacies of post-racialism and the role of transnational labour regimes based on labour extraction of migrant workers, who are often racialised and deprived of their human rights.”