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We are the representatives of the global anti-racism network of nongovernmental organizations known as the NGO Committee for the Elimination of Racism, Afrophobia, and Colorism, also known as CERAC. CERAC is appalled at recent acts of inhumane violence directed at and inflicted upon African descendants. We join in solidarity with the protest movement and uprising in the U.S. and world-wide, which continues to gain momentum as it honors George Floyd and condemns the brutal and very public anti-black murder that took his life along with the lives of countless others.

This global movement has roots in the outpouring of attention focused at the 2001 Durban, South Africa, World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR), which culminated in the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), a document that serves as a mandate to eliminate racism from our planet. CERAC has been advocating for universal adherence to the DDPA, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969), and the Programme of Activities for the Implementation of the Decade for People of African Descent, 2015-2024, adopted by the UN General Assembly. We also organize and engage in diverse events focused on the International Decade for People of African Descent.

Afrophobia is a root cause of the continued murder and brutality across the planet, and racism and colorism are related forms of discrimination and aggression that have caused death and suffering for centuries. We see these continuing horrors as rooted in the trafficking, enslavement, colonization, racial segregation, and 500 years of systemic and institutionally-supported violence and terror against people of African descent. We make the following recommendations for national and international action:

·    We use this time of global upheaval and audible abhorrence at racist tyranny to repeat our call for universal adherence by all UN Member states to the DDPA. 

·    We also appeal to states and NGOs to strongly support the full implementation of the DDPA in all UN Member countries with commitments to action plans and regular reviews.

·    We call for the elimination of qualified immunity or other means that protect police officers known for engaging in acts of violence and brutality and otherwise render the police accountability process nontransparent.

·    It is imperative that reparations be made to communities that have suffered direct or intergenerational racial violence, be it corporal, social, cultural, or economic, and we insist that mechanisms be put in place for meaningful and ongoing reparatory justice going forward. 

·    We call for a dismantling of systems of law enforcement that violate human rights, demilitarizing of police forces, investing in services that restore and preserve community health and well-being, and a fundamental re-thinking of the meaning of public safety and how it can be achieved with attention at its core to antiracism and human rights.

·    We insist that this anti-racist work include attention to state recidivism, so that guarantees of “never again” are meaningful. It is critical that antiracism mechanisms should be structured and enforced so that they are not easily dismantled by state action (legislation, withdrawal from pacts and treaties, or failures of public policy), which renders them ineffective. 

·    We call for states and institutions to develop working mechanisms for public apologies, reparatory justice, restitutions of various kinds appropriate to wrongs committed, dismantling of the prison industrial complex, ending of police brutality, and reinvention of the penal system, which we realize requires commitment to multimodal and long-term attention to systemic transformations.

·    We insist that Member states take steps to educate their populations (including youth) about the histories of race-based plagues with the goal of creating antiracist, equitable, and just societies for current and future generations.

·    We use this moment to join with anti-racism movements around the globe who are committed to the realization of the DDPA and we offer the cooperation of CERAC in all needed global anti-racist action at the United Nations to ensure there will be no more inattention to racism. We can be reached via our Facebook page, “NGO Committee for the Elimination of Racism, Afrophobia & Colorism – CERAC”, and at Twitter @NGO_CERAC.