4. Therefore, given these tensions, the situation since 1988 with regard to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance has regrettably not improved; indeed it has perhaps deteriorated, at a time when the movement of peoples has continued to increase and the intermingling of cultures and multi-ethnicity have become "social facts". Hence the importance of the forthcoming World Conference on racism, an importance which the Holy See would like to emphasize.

It is right to rejoice at the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, but the racist massacres or the "ethnic cleansing" of recent years, often in a context of general destruction, show to what extremes hatred and the will to dominate others can lead people. Other situations that gravely compromise the equal dignity of every human person continue to exist. For example, while the law may have abolished slavery virtually everywhere, the practice still persists, notably in Africa among people of different ethnic groups, or under new forms elsewhere, with the cruel exploitation of children, prostitutes or illegal immigrants. In addition, it is necessary to denounce the evil persistence of anti-Semitic prejudice, which was the cause of the Jewish Holocaust in the last century (cf. CR, Part II, n. 15). A century, it should be recalled, that began and ended with planned massacres in the name of race.