 Aloha and welcome to Cooper Union. This week we'll be looking at the International Decade for People of African Dissent. We're very excited to have two of the 2020 United Nations Fellows for People of African Dissent and co-founders of the Global Black Collective Institute. Thank you so much for joining us. The UN is commemorating the Decade for People of African Dissent, uniting the world to discuss common challenges facing African descent people around the planet. Today, we'll be looking at the Pillars of the International Decade, the UN Fellowship Program, insight from these former fellows, the new UN Permanent Forum, as well as promising practices and creative contributions to improve daily lives. London, thank you so much for joining us. Could you share a little bit about what it was like to be a fellow and what came out of that, this new Global Black Collective? Oh, yes. Hi, Joshua. Thank you so much for having us. It was an amazing experience. It was a very intense. It was three weeks towards the end of 2020. And there were about 29 fellows from about 14 different countries. And we were trained by UN experts on the international human rights framework and its mechanisms to give us that information so that we can work to advance and promote the human rights for people of African descent. And after our fellowship ended, a small group of us within the fellowship, we came together to form the Global Black Collective Institute. And so we are a Black-first organization, and we're dedicated to the realization of equity for people of African descent around the world, addressing and advancing the human rights of people of African descent through education, advocacy, and promotion. And Ikram and I are both founding members. And we are very excited to share our work. Thank you so much, Ikram. Could you share a little bit about your perspective of the fellow? Thank you, Joshua, for having us. So my name is Ikram Horsam. I'm a human rights lawyer and a UN fellow and also co-founder of the Global Black Collective. Happy to share with you my experience with the international fellowship. With the UN, it was very exciting. First, I had an opportunity to meet people, Black people around the world. We speak different languages, different backgrounds, but talking to them, I discover actually we have similar interests in almost a lot of stuff in terms of how racism impact us, but also how we navigate in a world where we are a minority. So that was extremely important experience for me. And so I really enjoy my experience at the fellowship. The only problem is because of COVID, we did it online. So the experience was not as fulfilling as other years. And we hope that maybe in a few years we'll all meet together because I work with London for months now since December on this fellowship, on this actually Global Black Collective and we never met in person because of COVID, right? So, but I'm hoping hopefully in the future we'll be able to meet in person. That's so exciting, especially to know that we can overcome even COVID but still connect with each other around the world and find the common challenges, but also create new creative campaigns such as the exciting Global Black Collective Institute. No, you copulately right Joshua because they allow us an opportunity. I was saying it was a blessing, the COVID was a kind of a blessing because we're able to continue our work online and able to create this amazing organization. Thank you so much. Could you share with us a bit, London, some of the pillars of this international decade for people of African descent and when it will conclude? Yes, and in fact, before I shared that I wanted to share about some of the countries that we came from for the fellowship for 2020. So that would be United States, Canada, China, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, so Haiti. So we were, our African diaspora was very well represented for this cohort for 2020. And so yes, the international decade for people of African descent, it is the years 2015 to 2024. So we have just a few years left and it aims to celebrate the important contributions of people of African descent worldwide, advancing social justice and the inclusion of policies to eradicate racism and intolerance. There are a few main objectives of the decade, promoting respect and protection and fulfillment of all human rights for people of African descent, a greater knowledge for our diverse heritage, adopting national and international mechanisms to advance our human rights. And so the three pillars that we work under to advance the international decade is recognition, justice and development. And so, Khrom, if you want, I don't know if you wanted to add anything. Yeah, I will. So first of all, it's just to go back to the question you asked previously on the fellowship. I wanted just to mention that I was a little bit surprised to learn that only one country finding that fellowship and it was Russia, which surprisingly doesn't have a lot of people of African descent in the country, because normally you would expect country like Western country, like Canada, US and other country who have a lot of huge people of African descent as their citizen to find those type of initiative. So I was a little bit surprised to learn only one country's funding, the fellowship, and it was Russia. So that was an interesting thing. To go back to what my friend Lenda was saying on the objective of the international decade is to ensure basically that those three teams, recognition, to ensure that the right of people of African descent and their equal participation in society in all aspects of society, they deal also with the issue of justice, how to strengthen legal framework to ensure people of African descent receive justice. And third, they deal with development to promote knowledge of the diverse cultural and contribution people of African descent provide to the society. For example, in Canada, where we have a minority of people of African descent believe and to recognize the acknowledgement of their contribution in country like Canada. Thank you so much. And of course, if you look at recognition, justice and development, that links up very well with the UN sustainable development goals. Can you share if there's any cool activities and campaigns being coordinated around the SDGs? Or if you wanna share maybe one of the best highlights or something you really learned during the fellowship that more people should know about? I wanna first, I will just speak to the perspective of Canada because I'm Canadian. And one thing that happened is, one, the decade, the international decade for people of African descent start from 2015 to 2024. It took three years for a government to acknowledge and recognize the decades. And that happened because a lot of people, there was a lot of lobbying, but I'm so glad that Canada is one of the country that acknowledged and recognized the decades. And there was some activity, but there was not enough to be quite honest to advance the program of activity of the decades. So that's one perspective of like, in North America that in Canada, yes, we acknowledge the decade, but there was not a lot of activity. There were mostly local activity than federal activity. So for example, Ontario, which has the highest number of black people in Canada, recognized the decade, and there was a lot of activity. The city of Toronto, which is the largest city in Canada put in place. They also acknowledge the decade. They also pioneer some of the data, desegrated data collection. So those are some of the themes, I will see that is related to the decade. Thank you. London, anything you'd like to share from just south of the border of our great neighbors of Canada? Yes, I know that the United States has not officially adopted the international decade for people of African descent. I know that there has been some discussion by a few congressional members, but it's not beneficial. What I am most excited about is continuing to educate local communities about the decade, about the activities of the decade, the pillars of the decade. And we still have time to come together as communities to encourage the United States to officially adopt the decade. So there is still time. We have a lot of work to do, but I do feel hopeful that we can still work together. That's a great point, London. So since 2024 is the end of the decade, what are one or two steps that we can ask people to take to honor the spirit of the decade and what are some results that we hope we could achieve by 2024? Ikram, would you like to go first? Yes, it's actually a great question. And I will say in Canada, the biggest problem people of African descent have is the lack of acknowledgement. As a group, we do not even exist because black people as a category doesn't exist in any legislation in Canada. So that's the biggest problem. I will say that if one thing, the decade would allow, it would be an opportunity for us to lobby for that because in order to resolve a problem, you have to first identify the problem. Now black people are incorporated what we call in Canada visible minority, which basically is anyone who's not indigenous and non-whites. So basically everyone is incorporated in that category. So it's hard to address the problem that are unique to black people. For example, over the incarceration issue, police brutality, discrimination and education, which is a quite unique to the community in Canada, indigenous community and the black community. And so that's our biggest problem is if there will be one thing that Canada will take advantage of this will be to ensure that we'll lobby more using the framework of the permanent forum, but also other tools available under the decade to ensure that the government of Canada recognize black people as a distinct group, equity seeking group. Thank you so much. London, how about you? What do you think we could aim for? Yeah, you know, I think what we can do here at home is could be similar to what we're doing for the convention only elimination of all forms of discrimination against women's CEDAW. We, you know, as the United States has not ratified the CEDAW convention. However, there are cities adopting the principles of this international treaty. So I think we could adopt that when it comes to the international decade for people of African descent, I think local community members, we can continue to educate ourselves on this decade and what it means the principles and then we can as a collective community adopt these principles at the local level within our organizations, within our local government and then work our way and continue to talk with our members of Congress to officially, you know, recognize the decade, but it would really be beneficial for us to start working at the local level and infusing the principles into our work and recognizing the unique contributions and struggles of people of African descent in our communities. Excellent points and you both really alluded to some of the other aspects we're gonna get into. One is the permanent forum and then the other one talking about this UN for Human Rights Treaty Bodies. So really, I do appreciate you both talking about this situation on racism in North American context and really bringing it up that people don't think about a lot. And when we look at Canada, most recently, they just finally had put in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples International Law. So that was big. I think that was C-15 legislation. So it's great now that they've taken action on Indigenous, maybe we can see more action around people of African descent and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is celebrating its 20th year this year, but now we've created a brand new permanent forum. Could you maybe share a bit about the structure of the permanent forum, maybe when it plans on meeting and why it's such an important initiative in international human rights law? Yeah, I can go if you want. Go ahead. So the permanent forum, I will say, I won't say a byproduct of the decade, but it was part of the decade, was part of the program of activities of the decade. We, some of our members are the Black Global Collective members who participated actually in one that were elaborating the modality of the forum itself. So basically, the forum will allow, now so far the information I have, and I don't have a lot of details, they will have one permanent secretariat. I believe the Indigenous forum has four or five, if my memory is correct. So maybe that will be something that we need to know to ensure that we have more permanent staff to work there. Because one person, I don't know how that person would be able to coordinate all the civil society requests. And it was, on August 2nd, actually was a historic day for people of African descent around the world when that resolution passed. There was some concern in terms of all the requests that, for example, our member of Black Global Black Collective and other members who were working closely with the modality of the forum we're working on, were not really addressed in terms of financing, for example. And also some of the requests in relation to reparation, those modalities were not fully detailed in the permanent forum. But nevertheless, August 2nd was a historic day for people of African descent around the world. We are hoping that the permanent forum will allow us people of African descent and mechanism to coordinate all the efforts in terms of advocacy. And especially in a world where, for example, now resolution 43.1, which deal with law enforcement and discriminations as a result of the death of George Floyd, those historical documents did not exist prior to this decade, I will say. And that opportunity, I think the permanent forum will allow us a mechanism to advocate better for justice and equality for people of African descent around the world. And I believe organizations such as ours, we've noticed while talking to other members because as Linda explained, we have members who are diverse members, memberships, people around the world. And we noticed that people of African descent have the same struggle, regardless whether they are in UK, Australia, Canada, Brazil or the US. So because of that, one of our plan in the future is hopefully to coordinate our efforts and to learn from each other and see what we can do globally to use the international mechanism such as the permanent forum to advocate better for the interests of black people around the world. Thank you so much, London. Anything that you'd like to add to that? About the current situation and its potential. Sure, yeah. One of the things I would like to add to sort of add to Ikram is to talk about, this was nearly a decade in the making. There has been consistent advocacy and activism around establishing this permanent forum from activists around the globe. And that does include some of the members of the Global Black Collective Institute, but this was truly a global effort. And so the day that the permanent forum was adopted, many of us watched the General Assembly that day. And what I've learned is that again, many people in our local communities are not aware of this permanent forum. So I still, for me as being a community organizer and deeply embedded in communities in Metro Detroit, one of my goals is to ensure that community is more active and more knowledgeable about this important mechanism and to ensure that we participate in how the forum interacts with the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and other UN agencies. That's great. Is there a starting date that they have announced or when the first permanent forum would be scheduled? Just wondering as people are trying to get their calendars in order in their community. And then the other important point you talked about was CDaw and those cities. It is exciting to see human rights cities organizing around the world to kind of take in that gap that exists between the international, the national and the local and state level. So it is exciting to see that you mentioned cities for CDaw. One of the other important points is the UN committee on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. We know CERD has actually indicated they'll be reviewing the United States in 2022. Maybe it's important for people to know a little bit about the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination CERD. Also, CDaw, why we haven't ratified that yet? It's really brings up some points. When you look at what I'm saying about Canada, not coming so late in the US, not yet ratifying certain things. What do you think we could do about growing a culture of human rights in these two countries that are really seen as beacons of democracy and freedom around the world? That's a good question. That's a very good question. Actually, it was interesting to see during work with a coalition of people of African descent around the world on the modality of the permanent forums. We've noticed that there was a few groups, a few countries that were really opposed to the permanent forum and were filing a lot of objections. Unfortunately, this country happened to be the country that advocated for human rights around the world, the UK, US and Japan. So it was interesting to see for the decade but also for the permanent forum, those with the same country were opposed. And sometimes you will notice that at international level, personally for me, that's my biggest takeout from this fellowship was my involvement in international politics and the UN work. And I've noticed how, for example, in Canada, our government will take extremely progressive position and it was verbally on issue of race. But when it comes to international issue, Canada objected to the permanent forum initially and then later on is abstained. So it shows really the true color of how the country stand for human rights. So it's unfortunately that a lot of people are not involved in the international community but that give us a true picture of how the country stand when it comes to human rights. And it also will allow us to use those international forum to influence the welcome law. And one example actually I would like to share is in which a great views is a historical ruling that happened last week. I think it was yesterday, two days ago, the 23rd, I believe in Nova Scotia, I don't know if you heard of it. It was a decision by the Court of Appeal in Nova Scotia. And interestingly, in that case, the Nova Scotia coalition for the decade for people of African descent was interveners. So they had someone to represent their interests and that person, that lawyer, argued the impact of racism and systemic discriminations and overrepresentation of black people in Nova Scotia prison, which is a province in Canada. And what is interesting is the first time in Canada that history of racism, systemic discrimination and marginalization would be taken into consideration when a person is sentenced during sentencing, which is normally exists for Indigenous Canadian and Indigenous people in Canada, but do not exist for people of African descent. So that, for me, give me a lot of hope that the connection between international advocacy and international instruments and the impact on direct legal cases here in Canada. And I think that's the future that we all hope will participate in the future. Thank you for that legal development. London, would you like to add anything? Yeah, I think what's really important in the United States is for people to continue, because I know a lot of people are to continue to have an understanding and pursue information on how our leaders are interacting on the international stage, how we are interacting with UN agencies and other countries. And it's important to understand why the United States has not signed on to most of the core human rights treaties. And even the ones that we have ratified such as CERD, it is important, it really does come back to our work as advocates and activists. So to ensure that we hold the United States accountable for its commitments to what we have committed to at the UN. So even after we are seen at CERD and there are recommendations given, we as a community still I believe have an obligation to ensure that the United States follows through. So it's continuous work, but it's important work. And that's what I try to instill to young people, particularly when I'm in the community is how powerful we are as global citizens, as US citizens to use our voices to make that impact. That's a great point. And he talks about that cycle and it's a cycle of courage and a cycle of compassion but that we started the community, we demand our rights. And if at the capital level in Ottawa and DC, it's ignored and we use the global civil society and the international instruments and then apply that moral pressure to make sure that they do what they've already promised to and made those promises to their fellow peer nations. And it's a chance then to at least use all the instruments that exist. So we're talking about the treaty bodies and that's such a good point London and that we're the only country that hasn't ratified the convention on the rights of the child, which is absolutely shocking. One of the handful that haven't ratified Seedaw on women and then out of the nine, the core nine, only ratified three, which is, I know school just started. So if you look at school starting that's definitely not passing grade. And no one would think that about the United States. So it's really a campaign to educate and engage and then empower people to make a difference. And that's, I think one of the exciting things is the fellowship brings leaders from around the world to say what I'm facing where I might have felt alone, I actually have so much more in common with so many people in places I never even imagined. And so one of the things I think that Ikram brought up that I thought was really the most powerful is also resolution 43-1 and how after the murder of George Floyd, civil society and people who are directly impacted and their family members demanded that the UN look at systemic racism and police brutality. Is there anything you'd like to share about that new initiative? We know the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet just shared her report and we know that there's actions taking place, but it's interesting what has happened during COVID around the issue of racism in North America but around the world. We can maybe conclude with that, Ikram. Okay. One thing I would like to highlight on resolution 43-1, it's the country that actually sponsored that is one tiny West African country, Bukuna Faso. So that for me, it's not only the African group in general who sponsored that, but it was started by Bukuna Faso. It's hopeful to see how a tiny, tiny little country in West Africa is able to sponsor those type of resolution, historical resolution. It also speaks to the fact that African people are really aware and affected by the plight of people of African descent outside Africa. Because I'm myself born and raised in Africa and grew up now here in Canada, so the impact of racism was not the same as someone who was born in North America. So that's for me, it's historical. It also showed the power of civil society at the UN level. And a lot of people always, for example, say, well, what is the point of using the international instrument, but they forget the impact at international level it will have on countries such as North America, US, Canada, or Mexico. And if a resolution 43 and the report that will come out, actually, it's not implemented, that will be a tool for local activists to use and pressure the government to say, this is an international community that decide those are some of the remedy that need to be implemented in your country. So it's time for you to put in place some protocols to ensure that at least issue of police precuterities are present in your country. What is interesting also to know that is, although it is a problem that originally came from the US, it has an international impact. You probably saw on TV, Black Lives Matter in Canada, US, and Europe, yeah, exactly. Every country even saw a clip of people in Iran where there's a minority of black people there, although yes, there's Afro community in Iran, but it's extremely small. But it was non-Afro and Iranian people who were also a participant. And it's called a country we'll never take, even a country like Greece. So the impact is international and it's important to know that there's a way you can locally influence using international instrument and international resolution such as 43.1. London, just an initial idea around 43 and we'll continue this conversation because we know next week will be the 20th anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism that took place in Durban, South Africa. So we'll continue our conversation and a little bit more reflection next time to see where we've gone in two decades. But any initial final comments on resolution 43.1? Yes, what I will say is that when I heard that Burkina Faso led the African group to demand an urgent debate on police brutality, particularly in the United States, I felt the spirit and power of the ancestors really coming together and making this happen. And again, like Ikram was saying, it's very, very powerful to know that the people on the continent, African people on the continent are very aware of what's happening in the diaspora. And it just shows how powerful we can all be when we are coming together to advocate for each other. So I felt the power of the ancestors and they spoke and the voices are strong. And we thank you both for speaking today and we thank you both for sharing the international decade for people of African descent. And thank you so much for joining us on Cooper Union. Mahalo. Thank you. Thank you so much.