UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour has said that the UN-sponsored 2009 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance will not be a "repetition of the 2001 world conference," and said the follow up meeting to what has become known as the Durban Conference should be viewed as "an opportunity to reinvigorate commitments, and a vehicle to fine-tune responses in a purposeful and contextual manner."

The first Durban conference, held early September, 2001, was a festival of anti-Israel hatred and classic anti-Semitism. Arab and Moslem groups openly denied the Holocaust, sold anti-Semitic texts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and carried banners reading "Hitler should have finished the job."

Several Western countries have announced plans to boycott the 2009 conference because of early indications that the conference will be a repetition of the 2001 conference. Jewish representatives have been excluded from some planning meetings, which have been scheduled for the major Jewish festivals of Pesach and Yom Kippur.