Proclaiming the Day in 1966, the General Assembly of the United Nations called upon the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

During the annual European-wide Action Week Against Racism, which takes place around 21 March, thousands of people fight for tolerance and equal rights for everybody and celebrate the diversity of Europe.

This year, from 14-22 March, once again hundreds of activities on the local, national and international level will take place all around Europe, organised by a wide variety of organisations. Activities range from intercultural youth festivals over getting racist slogans off the walls to multicultural football matches.

In 2008 numerous organisations in 47 European Countries joined the annual European-wide Action Week Against Racism. Thousands of people all over Europe were united in their fight for a Europe without discrimination, intolerance, racism and nationalism - promoting diversity, mutual respect and understanding.

This year again International organization UNITED calls for international participation during the European-wide Action Week Against Racism (14-22 March 2009)! - http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/pages/InfoARW_09.htm

Racism is not a local issue and the European-wide campaign can help to set the agenda on all levels. We have to campaign on local, regional and European level to get our point across. By linking local and national actions, we can generate European-wide publicity. We can show that there is an enormous amount of people that believe in an intercultural open society. It gives all participants new energy to go on with their everyday struggle against racism and intolerance and let people who may not be aware of it in their daily life reflect about the issues raised. You will get motivated and inspired by the ideas and enthusiasm of other people, learn from each other's experience and views, generate more publicity because of the scope and size of the activity, etc. If you would like to take part in this campaign, keep in mind that it is the variety and creativity of many different activities all over Europe that make the UNITED campaigns unique.