The Roma of Europe, African descendants in Latin America, and the Dalits, the so-called "untouchables," have made their voices heard like never before. The large presence of African-Americans, including the strong delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus, reminded everyone of the challenges still facing the United States on the long road to equality.

The occurence of the conference helped to spark a mass political movement in India for the rights of more than 200 million Dalits. Although the simple paragraph calling on nations to combat discrimination based on "work and descent" may fail to overcome furious lobbying by the Indian government, an unprecedented international mobilization and the presence of over 200 lower caste conference participants from India, Japan and Nepal has placed their cause indelibly on the world stage.

The activists agreed early to compromise by dropping use of the word "caste" from the proposed paragraph, settling for discrimination based on "work and descent." The intensity of the Indian lobbying effort against this simple term revealed to diplomats and others at the conference how deeply entrenched the problem is. And now the world knows that the problem also exists in Japan, as well as in West Africa. Victims and their supporters focused on this matter may leave without a paragraph mentioning their cause, but they will also leave with a vastly enhanced network of diplomats, activists, and journalists newly attuned to it.

Those advocating the cause of the world's 50 million refugees will likely get the four key paragraphs they sought into the conference documents.

The paragraphs address root causes of refugee status, the effect of racism among those causes, subsequent treatment of refugees, and the need for durable solutions to the problem, including the need for governments to honor commitments in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Victories like these are huge in the arenas of treaties, and in the subsequent posturing of governments on the international stage. They are small and initially invisible victories in the daily lives of victims of racism and intolerance. But progress on big problems often comes slowly and in small increments.

The world's landmark victories against racism have been won locally, on the ground, with international support. The abolition of slavery, the outlawing of caste discrimination in the Indian constitution, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the dismantling of legal segregation in the United States, were all won first and foremost locally.

The UN and events like the WCAR are relative newcomers to these matters, and the assistance of the global community will always be supplemental to the efforts on the ground. Those who saddle the WCAR with expectations of major concrete victories reversing the impact of racism and intolerance are naïve. But for those who understand the interplay of symbols, hope and politics, the WCAR will have an enduring impact.

The African and western governments appear unable to agree on how to address reparations for slavery. What a surprise! The conference, however, has focused more publicity and attention on the matter than ever before. The demand for an apology and reparations has progressed in a short time from a marginal idea into a central platform of those who suffer today because of these past crimes. As well, the role of certain African countries such as Sudan in current slavery practises is more conspicuous than ever by its absence from the agenda which they bring to the conference.

In 1903, the great African-American writer W.E.B. DuBois stated that the "problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." At the end of the century, in his Nobel Peace Prize Address in 1993, Nelson Mandela was still pleading "Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King, Jr. to have been correct, when he said that "humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war." The saliency of racism as a defining global issue would have been clearer had the WCAR not suffered the misfortune of coinciding with a period of extreme tension in the Middle East.

Progress in correcting old wrongs is painfully slow. The WCAR is no exception to this experience. But we should take the victories we have won in Durban, and on the road to Durban, and carry them forward.

(Reed Brody and Joel Motley are co-chairs of the Human Rights Watch team at the WCAR.)