United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.^[2] It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world.^[3] The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City, with its other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and The Hague.

The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future wars, succeeding the ineffective League of Nations.^[4] On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 and took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. Pursuant to the Charter, the organization’s objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.^[5] At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; with the addition of South Sudan in 2011, membership is now 193, representing almost all of the world’s sovereign states.^[6]

The organization’s mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles.^[7] UN membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization beginning in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council.^[8] By the 1970s, the UN’s budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.^[9]

The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, funds and programmes such as the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Additionally, non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN’s work.

The UN’s chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General, currently Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres, who began his five year-term on 1 January 2017. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states.

The World Conference Against Racism (WCAR)

The United Nations stepped to the forefront of the struggle against racism and White Supremacy in the late summer of 2001 with the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which is often simply referred to by its original concept name, World Conference Against Racism.  The Conference took place between August 31 and September 8, 2001.  According to the Web site https://www.forum-asia.org/?p=7267, Durban Declaration and Programme of Action: a Framework for Assessing Elimination of Discrimination, September 13, 2007:

The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held from August 31 through September 8, 2001 in Durban, South Africa under the theme “UNITED TO COMBAT RACISM: Equality, Justice, Dignity”. This is commonly referred to as the Durban Conference.

The objectives of the Conference were as follows:

• • to review progress made against racial discrimination, to reappraise obstacles to further progress and to devise ways to overcome them;
  • to consider ways and means to better ensure the application of existing standards and the implementation of existing instruments to combat racial discrimination;
  • to increase the level of awareness about the scourges of racism and its consequences;
  • to formulate concrete recommendations on ways to increase the effectiveness of United Nations activities and mechanisms through programmes aimed at combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance;
  • to review the political, historical, economic, social, cultural and other factors leading to racism;
  • to formulate concrete recommendations to further action-oriented national, regional and international measures to combat all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance; and,
  • to draw up concrete recommendations for ensuring that the United Nations has the financial and other necessary resources for its actions to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The outcome of the Durban Conference was the Durban Declaration and the Programme of Action (DDPA). The 122-paragraph Declaration ends with the call that “…the formulation and implementation of…strategies, policies, programmes and actions…are the responsibility of all States, with the full involvement of civil society at the national, regional and international levels”.

The five thematic areas tackled during the Conference were as follows:

1. 1. Sources, causes, forms and contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
   2. Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
   3. Measures of prevention, education and protection aimed at the eradication of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance at the national, regional and international levels
   4. Provision of effective remedies, recourse, redress, and other measures at the national, regional and international levels
   5. Strategies to achieve full and effective equality, including international cooperation and enhancement of the United Nations and other international mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The Conference identified the categories of victims who suffer most from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other related forms of intolerance. The categories include Africans and people of African descent, Asians and Asian descendants, Indigenous Peoples, Roma Peoples, migrants, refugees, women, children, and people affected by HIV/AIDS.

Just like other UN world conferences, the Durban Conference ran parallel with NGO Forums. The five regional meetings prior to Durban were all actively participated in by civil society groups who expressed concern about emerging issues such as trafficking in women and children, migration and discrimination, gender and racial discrimination, racism against Indigenous Peoples and protection of minority rights.

In the end, the Conference reaffirmed the value of diversity in humanity in its Declaration: “We further affirm that all peoples and individuals constitute one human family, rich in diversity. They have contributed to the progress of civilizations and cultures that form the common heritage of humanity.”

Although some attendees thought the influence of religious groups, the women’s lobby and the Jewish lobby had blunted the intended force of the WCAR to openly challenge the institutional racism that people of African descent faced in nations around the world and that motivated the continued neocolonial practices against African nations, the conference was able to produce an important document in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) which, over the course of a total of 341 paragraphs (122 for the Durban Declaration and another 219 for the Programme of Action), described and acknowledged the problem of global racism and xenophobia, stated unequivocal support for the struggles of oppressed peoples of the world who were recognized group by group, discussed specific examples as well as some of the root causes of racism and xenophobia, and proposed actions that nations should take to help eliminate racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. 

The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which has frequently been cited by UN officials as recently as early December 2020 as one of the most important documents the UN has produced on racism and xenophobia, nonetheless remains relatively unknown by heads of state, community activists and members of the grassroots community, just as all of the issues originally raised by the DDPA and the World Conference Against Racism still assault our collective sense of justice to this day.

One reason for this must be the degree to which too many powerful forces in the international community never truly took the WCAR or the DDPA seriously enough to follow through on their recommendations.  This is seen today in the lip service given to activists by many of the UN Member States when pressed for anti-racism reforms only to ignore those promises when the time comes for implementation.  This seems to be because of a lack of true commitment to the eradication of racism and xenophobia from the start.  For one, the 2001 Conference itself was clearly resisted by many of the world’s most powerful governments.  The US administration of then-president George W. Bush did not even send a high-level delegation, sending instead relatively unknown underlings who wielded little to no influence over US policy.  The issues surrounding Reparations for the enslavement of African-Americans, the comparison of Zionism to racism and the apartheid-like conditions under which the Palestinians are forced to live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in Israel were intense wedge issues, with the low-level US group, along with Israel and several of their allies, walking out of the Conference when those issues were broached.  I distinctly remember reports that at least one attendee at the Conference angrily said that “the US will regret this,” and within days the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were no more and over 3,000 souls were tragically lost in a well-coordinated terrorist attack destroying them and a side of the US Pentagon in Virginia.  Had the US shown any contrition at all at the WCAR, for the legacy of slavery if not for the Palestinians, might the terrorist attacks of “9-11” been called off?

Since 2001, there were two more such Conferences.  The second gathering, officially dubbed the Durban Review Conference, was held between April 20-24, 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland to review the DDPA and whatever progress had been made since the original WCAR in Durban, South Africa.  Even the Obama administration did not send an official delegation from the US, though a number of African American activists did attend, as they did in 2001.  According to an article in Wikipedia (Durban Review Conference – Wikipedia):

The conference was boycotted by Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and the United States. The Czech Republic discontinued its attendance on the first day, and twenty-three other European Union countries sent low-level delegations. The western countries had expressed concerns that the conference would be used to promote anti-Semitism and laws against blasphemy perceived as contrary to the principles of free speech, and that the conference would not deal with discrimination against homosexuals. European countries also criticized the meeting for focusing on the West and ignoring problems of racism and intolerance in the developing world.

Controversy surrounded the attendance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the conference due to his past statements on Israel and the Holocaust. On the first day of the conference, Ahmadinejad, the only head of state to attend, made a speech condemning Israel as “totally racist” and accusing the West of using the Holocaust as a “pretext” for aggression against Palestinians. The distributed English version of the speech referred to the Holocaust as an “ambiguous and dubious question”. When Ahmadinejad began to speak about Israel, all the European Union delegates left the conference room, while a number of the remaining delegates applauded the Iranian President.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed dismay at both the boycotts and the speech.

Durban III, a follow-up conference that took place on 22 September 2011 in New York City, was boycotted by the ten aforementioned countries (including the Czech Republic), along with Austria, Bulgaria, France and the United Kingdom.

According to the United Nations Web site, Durban Review Conference, 20-24 April 2009 (un.org):

The Review Conference served as a catalyst to fulfilling the promises of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action agreed at the 2001 World Conference through reinvigorated actions, initiatives and practical solutions.

The legacy of the three World Conferences Against Racism can be found today in a number of international Pan-Afrikan organizations that were inspired, either immediately or within a few years and exist to this day, such as the Global African Congress (GAC), African Unity African Diaspora Sixth Region (AUADS), Middle East African Diaspora Unity Council (MEADUC), MIR-Guadeloupe, Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) and many others; and also the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), which remains a guidepost for the United Nations’ anti-racism efforts to this day.

The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA)

The seminal document that resulted from the WCAR is the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, or DDPA. (The full text is available on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Web site at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Durban_text_en.pdf or Durban_text_en.pdf (ohchr.org), for those who would like to read it in its entirety.)  To this day, activists working with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) and the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD) hold up the DDPA as the most important document to come from the WCAR, while also decrying the fact that the DDPA is virtually unknown to the general public and even to many Pan-Afrikan and anti-racist activists. There is, however, a potential opportunity for Pan-Afrikan activists to use the document to pressure the nation-states where we live in the Diaspora, and even the United Nations itself, to live up to the lofty claims of egalitarianism, fairness and justice that they brag about when the cameras are rolling.

Being the result of a week-long meeting of hundreds of delegates from around the world, and being crafted as an official United Nations document, the DDPA is, of course, extremely wordy and almost intolerably long (at least for someone with a short attention span such as myself; it seems diplomats and conference organizers possess a special talent for wordiness). There are essentially two parts.

The “Durban Declaration”, which, after a lengthy series of statements demonstrating the awareness, concern and commitment of the authors about the issue, then sets forth a number of specific observations of the situation of the “present day” (for 2001, which is pretty much still the state of affairs in 2020, which should tell us something), expresses the regret of the delegates (or at least the authors) about the situation with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; issues a condemnation of slavery and the slave trade; makes several statements of solidarity with the struggles of vulnerable groups (people of Afrikan descent, people of Asian descent, Indigenous populations, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, internally-displaced people, Holocaust survivors, Palestinians, victims of Islamophobia, women, girls, children, victims of HIV/AIDS, etc.); discusses the conditions that lead to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; suggests basic values and strategies for UN Member States and the UN itself to adhere to for the elimination of intolerance; and makes reference to a list of United Nations conferences, conventions, charters and international agreements since at least 1992 that were designed to mitigate or eliminate instances of intolerance around the world. This section is, basically, the “Whereas” portion of the DDPA, describing the situation and offering some assessment of the current state of things on the ground. The 122 numbered statements can make the document quite a tedious read, but we link to it here for those who wish to look at it in some detail.

The “Programme of Action” amounts to the “Now Therefore” portion of the DDPA. The Programme of Action is a long list of recommendations that the conferees urge Member States to implement to rectify the situations of those who suffer from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as were acknowledged in the “Durban Declaration”.

The International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD)

The World Conference Against Racism and its two Review Sessions in 2009 and 2011, while important milestones in the growing recognition of world governments and international bodies of the scourge of racism, particularly against African people, were yet unable to solve the issue.  Black people continued to suffer from economic deprivation, environmental discrimination (see the report Who’s In Danger for a sobering documentation of environmental racism), police brutality, mass incarceration, denial of our history and a host of other ills.  As often happens with major conferences, many of the global powers ignored the 2009 and 2011 follow-up conferences and thus gave truth to the words attributed to Sir Winston Churchill: “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” 

It was necessary to announce a period of commemoration to spur a real commitment to carrying out the mandate of the WCAR and the DDPA.  Thus, the ten-year period between January 2015 and December 2024 would be dubbed the International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD).

On Wednesday, December 10, 2014, a ceremony was held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.  Delivering a keynote speech on behalf of Global African Civil Society was Dr. Barryl Biekman, founder and president of several Pan-African organizations, including Tiye International, Foundation National Monument Dutch Slavery Past and SRDC-affiliated organization African Unity African Diaspora Sixth Region (AUADS) Community Council Europe.  She is also a current coalition member of the Global African Diaspora Decade of Return Organization (https://decade-of-return.com).  Her speech was originally posted on the Web site KUUMBAReport Online (Barryl Biekman at UN International Decade for People of African Descent | KUUMBAReport.com).

On Wednesday, December 10, 2014, the United Nations held a special event at UN Headquarters in New York City to officially launch the International Decade for People of African Descent.  The ten-year observance, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2024, has been billed by the UN as an opportunity to concentrate on issues of racism and racial discrimination faced by people of Afrikan descent around the world under the theme of “People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice and Development”.  Dr. Barryl Biekman, a Surinamese-born Afrikan Diaspora organizer living in The Netherlands, is the chairperson of the African Union-African Diaspora Sixth Region (AUADS) Community Council Europe, an Afrikan Diaspora Civil Society organization that is working to organize Afrikan Diasporans in Europe.  She was chosen by the President of the UN General Assembly, His Excellency Sam Kutesa, to give an introductory speech on behalf of Afrikan Diaspora Civil Society.  This is the text of her speech.

Statement by Dr. Barryl A. Biekman, Civil Society Speaker
Launching the International Decade for People of African Descent
United Nations, New York, December 10, 2014

Mr. President, Excellencies, Honoured Guests, Representatives of the African Families and Civil Society,

I bring you greetings from the members of Tiye International, The African European Women’s Movement “Sophiedela”, the Platform of the Dutch Slavery Past, the Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent and the world wide Civil Society grassroots African families on this historical moment of the launching of the International Decade for People of African descent.

[The Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent is established to provide global peoples activism and support for the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent as proclaimed by the United Nations for the period 2015-2024 based on the principles of Recognition, Justice and Development.]

Mr. President,

We support the International Decade for People of African descent and it’s Mandate to follow the recommendations pertaining to the DDPA [Durban Declaration and Plan of Action – Editor] from the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR), as well as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

It must be reminded here that the decision to have the International Decade did not come as a gift from heaven. It came only because of a long struggle by Pan Africanist supported by those civil society organizations who were committed to the implementation of the DDPA and finally because of the hard working involvement of the Working Group of Experts on People of African descent, not to forget the support of the African Group and the great majority of member states of the United Nations. A special thanks therefore goes to the African countries for their role in defending the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and to the African Union to declare African Diaspora worldwide family as their 6th region.

The launching of the Decade today is a great victory for the cause of justice with the strong reaffirmation of and call for the full and effective implementation of the DDPA. We hope that the implementation of the Decade should put a final end to the opposition against, undermining of and false promotion regarding the Durban follow-up process which we have regularly witnessed since the successful World Conference Against Racism in 2001.

At the center of the demands during the World Conference Against Racism, by African people and in diaspora under the leadership of the 12th December Reparation Movement and many other Pan African Reparation Coalitions, was the declaration of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, colonialism and apartheid as crimes against humanity. In fact it was the longest and most depraved crime against humanity ever.. which lasted for more than three centuries as had been declared by the United Nations including the republic Suriname by its Permanent Delegation, ambassador Udenhout in 2001. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, colonialism and apartheid destroyed the development of Africa and enriched Europe and the European colonists in the Americas. It established the system of racism & racial discrimination, to be specific Afrophobia, that effects and has its impact what the African people and in diaspora experience until today.

Mr. President,

Really, we have reasons to be glad with the establishment of the Decade. But we have reasons to be disappointed too. Because despite of the adoption of the Programme of Activities by the General Assembly last month, powerful State actors, including those who boycotted the 2009 Durban Review Conference and the 2011 commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the DDPA, continue their efforts to render the DDPA impotent. We deplore the nine votes cast against and 42 abstentions cast, but salute the 121 votes in favor of the resolution on actions against racism and comprehensive implementation of the DDPA, which the third committee of the General Assembly approved on November 26th. At the same time we are bewildered that abstaining countries succeeded to delete a paragraph from the G77 draft resolution, which had the support of the majority of countries and which stated: “Commends the constructive role played by non-governmental organizations in participating in the Durban follow-up mechanisms and the Human Rights Council, which has greatly contributed to the development of the Programme of Activities and the preparation for the International Decade.”

Mr. President, Truth has the inherent power to produce the promised effects.

The full and irrevocable recognition by all countries that the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, colonialism and apartheid was a crime against humanity is necessary for the credibility of the Decade. Without that we have reason to doubt the sincerity of states to restore the rights of people of African descent during the Decade. It is why I on behalf of the African descent worldwide families challenge all national state parliaments and governments to officially recognize and declare the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity as some countries have already done. We call on all the countries who organized, participated in and profited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the hard slave labour by the kidnapped African ancestors to present their sincere apologies as the first step and I challenge all governments and parliaments concerned, to act on this urgent matter.

“I on behalf of the African descent worldwide families challenge all national state parliaments and governments to officially recognize and declare the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity as some countries have already done.”

We strongly welcome the efforts by Caribbean governments & states to place the issue of Reparations on the International Agenda. For the African descendants families the adopted theme of the Decade, “Recognition, Justice, Development”, is for us synonymous with the Repairing of the damage, which must become the overall concept of the Decade. Reparations is not limited to material repair, but something more fundamental relating to restoring every aspect of the rights of people of African descent.

Mr. President,

We therefore invite all Member States, as proposed by the Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent, to recognize and honour the Decade as the “Reparation Decade”.

We believe that the right of People of African descent to learn about their rights as enshrined in the DDPA and other Human Rights instruments must be assured during the Decade. The Decade must become a framework to address the concentration of misery and disadvantages which people of African descent face everywhere they live: poverty, racial discrimination and lack of access to human rights & their institutions, high rates of unemployment and imprisonment, vulnerability to violence and lack of access to justice, lack of access to good education, healthcare, housing, multiple forms of discrimination, and political and economic marginalization and stigmatization.

As educators and scholars across the racial divide agree that (a) the primary purpose of education is to uplift and enhance the lives of all individuals (b) it must be the right type of education that engenders positive identity, self-esteem, self-confidence including love, respect and appreciation for one’s history and culture. We therefore call for adapting both formal and informal education for students of African descent and others so that that it no longer marginalizes and relegates Africa and Africans to periphery of anything important, but for most that our next African generations can say: “I’m not afraid, because of the color of my skin, to be an African … I’m proud to be an African.”

Mr. President,

We have seen the situation faced by people of African descent around the world grow more and more precarious, and we seek urgent and concrete results from the International Decade. African Diaspora Civil Society grassroots organizations cannot afford to leave any members of the African Diaspora and African Civil Society around the world behind. Every forum, every workshop, every review and assessment, every planning session and every on-the-ground implementation project must closely involve representatives from Civil Society and the grassroots communities. And we cannot stress enough the importance of always including women, girls and young male adults, the future generation, on an equal basis. To leave them behind would be as to leave our hearts and souls, our very selves, behind as well.

“Every forum, every workshop, every review and assessment, every planning session and every on-the-ground implementation project must closely involve representatives from Civil Society and the grassroots communities.”

When an African American man is strangled to death by the police on the streets of New York we the people of African descent feel the same that we cannot breathe. We add our voices in solidarity with all those demonstrating to demand justice for the victims of racially based police brutality. This situation makes it clear that institutionalized racism is still alive and that the campaigns against all forms of multiple racism & racial profiling as well the symbolic & psychological violence

situation in different countries must be intensified. Whether the ‘Black Pete figure’ in the yearly Dutch Santa Claus culture historical tradition is just a problem in the Netherlands because of the revival of stereotype of African (black) people or interlinked to similar historical cultural tradition, stereotypical language like some people continue to call us ’nigger’ & racist situations in other parts of Europe and the rest of the world.

Mr. President,

On behalf of the world wide African diaspora families I invite all of you to join hands with us for the implementation of the Programme of Activities in the spirit of “Recognition, Justice and Development.” Because this Decade requires the committed support and involvement of all: international, regional, national, sectors of society, stakeholders and people of good will in the world.

I invite you all to make this “Reparation Decade” a great success.

I thank you Mr. President.

Of course, even the pronouncement of an “International Decade” is no guarantee that anything will be done in those ten years.  Too often, those in power see such a period as an opportunity to stall for six to eight years, then embark on some perfunctory frenzy of activity when the world begins to notice their fecklessness, only to conclude with a solemn declaration that “we have done all that could be done” followed by a few games of Blame-The-Victims.  Perhaps this is why the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD), which had been founded in 2002 after the first WCAR, has begun to receive more attention from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) and, finally, from a wider group of African Diaspora activists.

The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and the International Decade

The most interesting aspect of the United Nations, from our perspective, is the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD), which works in conjunction with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and was established in 2002 as an outgrowth of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that was held in August 2001 in Durban, South Africa.  According to the Web site (OHCHR | Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent):

The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban in 2001, adopted the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Paragraph 7 of the Durban Programme of Action specifically “requests the Commission on Human Rights to consider establishing a working group or other mechanism of the United Nations to study the problems of racial discrimination faced by people of African descent living in the African Diaspora and make proposals for the elimination of racial discrimination against people of African descent”. 

Mandate

The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent was established in 2002 by the Commission on Human Rights resolution 2002/68 (as a Special Procedure). The mandate was subsequently renewed by the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council in its resolutions (CHR 2003/30, 2008/HRC/RES/9/14, 2011/HRC/RES/18/28, 2014/HRC/RES/27/25, A/HRC/RES/36/23 and A/HRC/RES/45/24).

In 2008, Human Rights Council resolution 9/14 entrusted the Working Group:

(a) To study the problems of racial discrimination faced by people of African descent living in the diaspora and, to that end, gather all relevant information from Governments, non-governmental organizations and other relevant sources, including through the holding of public meetings with them;

(b) To propose measures to ensure full and effective access to the justice system by people of African descent;

(c) To submit recommendations on the design, implementation and enforcement of effective measures to eliminate racial profiling of people of African descent;

(d) To make proposals on the elimination of racial discrimination against Africans and people of African descent in all parts of the world;

(e) To address all the issues concerning the well-being of Africans and people of African descent contained in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action;

(f) To elaborate short-, medium- and long-term proposals for the elimination of racial discrimination against people of African descent, bearing in mind the need for close collaboration with international and development institutions and the specialized agencies of the United Nations system to promote the human rights of people of African descent through, inter alia, the following activities:

In 2017, with resolution 36/23, the Human Rights Council further extended the mandate of the Working Group for three years.

Methods of Work

In the fulfilment of its mandate, the Working Group:

• • Holds two annual sessions
  • Undertakes Country visits
  • Responds to information and allegations received concerning its mandate under the Communications procedure
  • Reports to United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly on activities relating to the mandate