The anti-racism campaign called "Racism leads nowhere" was launched on Sunday in Liège on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The €200,000 campaign comes from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB) and aims to raise awareness and demonstrate that racism is harmful to society.
“It has never generated a solution but rather injustice, suffering, and conflict,” said FWB officials.
The initiative aims to reach out to the so-called “ambivalent” age group of 15 to 35-year-olds on different media and communication channels, mainly digital.
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On this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, some of the dead-ends in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation have been temporarily renamed... Because it is high time that everyone understood that racism leads nowhere... except to injustice, suffering and conflict.
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The Minister for Equal Opportunities, Frédéric Daerden, went to Impasse de l'Ange in Liège to temporarily rename the place “Impasse des préjugés racistes,” or “Impasse of racist prejudice.” A similar action took place in Brussels and Charleroi.
A video of that is the first part of the campaign, along with eight video vignettes that feature testimony from public and anonymous people, 20-second radio spots, social network tools (like a profile picture frame and a template reply people can use for addressing racist remarks on social media channels), stickers, and badges.
There’s also a website that greets visitors with a false 404 error message, saying that “racism leads nowhere.”
The videos will be promoted on social channels of influencers on Facebook and Instagram until the end of April.
“The Wallonia-Brussels Federation must be at the forefront of the fight against racism, particularly in order to quickly put in place a national action plan,” said Daerden.
Nearly €2 million have been made available to eliminate racist comments or acts, whether in an institutional setting or in society at large.
Helen Lyons
The Brussels Times
