According to United Nations (UN) data, approximately 134 million people of African descent live in the Americas and many millions more on other continents. Whether descendants of victims of slavery, more recent migrants or descendants of migrants, they are among the poorest and most marginalized communities in the world and have high mortality rates.

To end the injustices that people of African descent face every day, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the period from 2015 to 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent. It also approved a program of activities that allows states to specify their commitments to combat racism globally.

But are ten years enough to end structural discrimination against Africans and Afro-descendants? The reality is that, despite the historic ten-year process of the United Nations dedicated to reversing the scourge of racism, black communities continue to suffer from inequalities across the planet due to the legacy of slavery
and colonialism.

Indeed, the transatlantic slave trade lasted four centuries and is thought to have involved the trafficking of at least 12.5 million people kidnapped in Africa. Although European countries abolished legal slavery in the 19th century, Africans were freed without financial resources, land, and equal access to employment and formal education.

Thus, the period following the abolition of slavery marked the continuation of hierarchical systems and practices of dehumanization that, even today, keep people of African descent at the bottom
of the social pyramid.

Similarly, the public execution of African American George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by a Minneapolis police officer, revealed the extent of police violence against people of African descent around the world and led to the international community’s recognition that the current situation of black people is linked to the radical violence to which they were subjected in the past.

For this reason, and to seek global restorative justice for Afro-descendant communities in the region, several Latin American and Caribbean countries have recently called on the United Nations to proclaim a second International Decade for Afro-descendants. This new decade will focus efforts not only on encouraging European countries to recognize their responsibility for the crimes of slavery and colonialism but also on convincing them to take concrete actions to compensate the descendants of the victims.

Some of these actions could be the restitution of objects stolen and looted by Europeans in colonial times, the creation of museums that help make visible the damage caused by the slave trade, or the cancellation of the debt of colonized countries, as already requested by Francia Márquez Mina, Vice President of Colombia.

It will not be an easy task for colonizing countries to repair the effects of the genocide committed in the past against the African population. But under the auspices of the United Nations, the period between 2025 and 2034 will represent an opportunity for targeted action by States towards restorative justice and the fight against structural racial discrimination at the local, national, regional and global levels. (Photo: 123rf)

Isabelle Mamadou