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INTE R N AltO N
Interview with
Ana eurinda
Executive Secretary of the African Commission of Health
and Human Rights Promoters (CAPSDH)
Recommendation 34 adopted by the
seventy-ninth session of the United
Nations Committee on the Elimina-
tion of Racial Discrimination (8 Au-
gust-2 September 2011) states that:
"Racism and structural discrimina-
tion against people of African descent,
rooted in the infamous regime of sla-
very, are evident in the situations of in-
equality affecting them and reflected,
inter alia, in the following domains:
their grouping, together with indige-
nous peoples, among the poorest of the
poor; their low rate of participation
and representation in political and in-
stitutional decision-making processes;
additional difficulties they face in ac-
cess to and completion and quality of
education, which results in the trans-
mission of poverty from generation
to generation; inequality in access to
the labour market; limited social rec-
ognition and valuation of their ethnic
and cultural diversity; and a dispro-
portionate presence in prison popula-
tions."
INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT - DIVA
Apart from being Executive Secretary of
CAPSDH, Ana Leurinda is the Founder!
President of the NGO Culture of Afro-
Indigenous Solidarity. She is an alumnus
of the Graduate Institute of International
and Development Studies (IHEID), Ge-
neva, and has also carried out high-level
studies in Mexico and Spain.
Q: Tell me about the Decade for Peo-
ple of African Descent.
Last year, on 10 December 2014, the General Assembly of
the United Nations in New York, in its resolution 68/237
launching the "International Decade for People of Afri-
can Descent", adopted the theme: "Recognition, Justice
and Development". It was a great victory for the cause
of justice with a strong reaffirmation of the call for a full
and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration
and Programme of Action (DDPA), adopted at the "Third
World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimina-
tion, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" which took
place in 2001 in Durban, South Africa.
The purpose of the Durban Declaration was to make
people of African descent, indigenous peoples, minority
groups and some other vulnerable groups more visible.
We hope that the coming into force of the Decade will
put an end to the opposition, which we have witnessed
on a regular basis since this important conference, which
has been undermining the Durban follow-up process.
The Declaration acknowledges that slavery and the slave
trade were crimes against humanity. We have a dream
that the present century will be one in which the world
will be called upon to atone with "reparatory justice" for
the crimes against Africans and their descendants.
Q: What do you mean by "reparator,
justice"?
The silence of the enslaving nations must be broken and
their denials terminated. Our values of respect, peace,
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