The United Nations (UN) Permanent Forum of People of African Descent will hold its very first session from 5 to 8 December 2022 at the Palais des Nations of the UN Office in Geneva, Switzerland.
Tuesday 29 November 2022, from 1 to 3 PM CET (Zurich time)
(7:00 AM in New York City, USA / 9:30 AM in Curitiba, Brazil / 1 PM Yaoundé, Cameroon / 7 PM in Bangkok, Thailand)
Ahead of this historic session, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) of the World Council of Churches (WCC) offers a virtual side event entitled The New UN Forum for People of African descent: realising the promises of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA)?
Register here!
Some of the issues which will be raised include:
- What are the lessons learnt since the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism? What kind of progress have we witnessed at the UN and other regional fora?
- What can we hope from this new body? How can churches contribute to its work?
- Policy efforts to combat systemic racism and racial discrimination
- Structural racism as the legacy of slavery and colonialism: communities of African descent across the globe live in structural discrimination and structural invisibility, and are scarred by poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization, social exclusion and economic disparities.
Moderator: Rev. Jennifer S. Leath, WCC Central Committee member, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME)
Panellists:
- Rev. Dr Iva Carruthers, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference
- Dr. Sushi Raj, member of UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
- Ms Marilia A. Schüller, Methodist Church of Brazil
- Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, WCC President from North America
- Rev. Emmanuel Wayi, Cameroon Network for Alternative Solutions (CAMNAS)
- Rev. Lamont Wells, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
____________________________________________________________________________________________
CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Social Development, please visit ngosocdev.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, please visit un-ngocrip.net.
