The conference statement commits to fight intolerance, racism and hatred of foreigners [Reuters]

Khalid Hussein grew up in Geneva. Not the one in Switzerland, with its grand buildings and important meetings. For most of his short life, Geneva was only a Red Cross camp in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

It is a cramped, dirty place, where basic facilities are scarce, houses are squeezed on to every available piece of land, and each of those tiny buildings can become home for up to 20 people.

There are just 25 toilets for 25,000 people. The only thing the two places share is the name.

Discrimination at home

Khalid is one of the stranded Bihari community which lives in virtual internal exile.

The group was against Bangladesh's split with Pakistan 37 years ago. They are Muslim, originally from the eastern Indian state of Bihar, so they speak Urdu, not Bengali, the national language of Bangladesh.

And now this group of half a million says it wants the exclusion and discrimination it has suffered since the 1970s to end. 

Khalid tells me: "There are quotas in schools and colleges and in government service for other minorities, for Christians and Hindus, but nothing for us. To the state, we simply don't exist.

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"If a Bihari wants to work, he must leave the camps and live in the city. But he can never tell anyone he is Bihari or he won't get a job or an apartment and he'll face all sorts of persecution. I do not want to deny what I am." 

With a group of friends, Khalid recently took a case to the high court in Bangladesh, arguing that as citizens born in the country, they should have national ID cards and the right to vote. 

The court agreed and suddenly politicians appeared in their camps offering to help their cause in exchange for their political support.

It is this action that has encouraged Khalid to step up the fight and demand more rights.

"We can change things, but we need to be organised and we need to work hard," he says.

Khalid's group, Al Falaha Bangladesh, is just one of the many small organisations in Geneva at this week's UN anti-racism conference hoping to have their voices heard, hoping that attention will soon fall on them and the advances they seek.

Left out

The nations that did not boycott this week's events stayed to agree on the conference's final document. It commits them to fight intolerance, racism and hatred of foreigners. 

But one human-rights group says political pressure stopped a number of important issues reaching the table, never mind making it into the final document. 

Juliette De Rivero from Human Rights Watch told Al Jazeera that "justice hasn't been done to all the issues".

Racism is perhaps a huge issue to deal with in a conference or two. But it is not as if it is a new issue in some places. 

Barbara Shaw is an Australian Aboriginal who has been speaking at side events during the conference. Throughout her life she suffered slurs, name-calling, and discrimination. 

Now she is hearing the same painful stories from her children. 

"The big white children from the high schools were picking on them and calling them nasty names," she says.

"They say to them 'you're a black this and you're a black that' or they'll tell them 'you're too black to ride on this bus this should be a white bus only' and it hurts me because my children, in this day and age, now have to face that.

"I always thought that racism was a thing of the past, but it's not."

The UN says this conference has been to try to help those who, in the past, felt excluded and ignored. Over the past four days some have tried to get their voice heard, to change things for the better for themselves and their communities.

But they know it is not just laws that have to change but attitudes if the hatred and bitterness they have faced over the years is to become a thing of the past.