AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DESCENDANTS CAUCUS

GENERAL INTERVENTION

SECOND PREPARATORY MEETING – WCAR

31 May 2001

We thank the chairperson and the delegate body for this opportunity to present the African and African Descendants Caucus’s views. The African and African Descendants Caucus is representative of NGOs from Continental Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States, Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean. We intervene at this time to urge your support of the 10 points that are critical to ending racism and discriminatory treatment directed at Africans and African descendants.

The 10 points that the African and African Descendants Caucus urges you to include in the Declaration and Programme of Action are as follows:

  1. We call for the recognition that the Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism are crimes against humanity.
  2. We call for the recognition of Reparations for Africans and African Descendants as essential to ending the inequality derived from the Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism.
  3. We call for the recognition of the economic basis of racism as a continuation of the economic basis of the Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism.
  4. We call for the adoption of national public policies that correct institutionalised forms of racism with emphasis on education, health care and environmental racism.
  5. We call for the adoption of culture-specific development policies.
  6. We call for the adoption of mechanisms to combat the interconnection of race and poverty and the exacerbating role that globalization (caused by governments and the private sector) has in this interconnection.
  7. We call for adoption of mechanisms to combat racism in the criminal punishment and penal system.

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  8. We call for adoption of policies specific to African and African Descendant Women that recognize and address the intersection of race and gender.
  9. We call for the adoption of policies that recognize and address the intersection of race and sexual orientation.
  10. We call for reform of the legal system. This reform should include national constitutional reforms and the development of regional and international mechanisms for dismantling racism such as the identification and funding of a U.N. body to monitor implementation of the WCAR Programme of Action as it relates to Africans and African Descendants.

We have drafted documents incorporating language for these 10 points into the drafts being considered by this body. We will be happy to make these documents available to you.