First Oral Statement to the 10th Session Working Group on Minorities, March 2004
Speaker: Mr. Silis Muhammad
Agenda Item 3 a Afrodescendants
Greetings Mr. Chairman, Members of the Working Group on Minorities. It is a pleasure to be here for the tenth session of the Working Group on Minorities. We have benefitted from your efforts of the past ten years, and we thank you for your dedication.
We, Afrodescendants, emerged as "New Minorities" during globalization – the present process of economic, political and cultural interconnection, which had its origin after the Cold War. Inasmuch as globalization is the phenomenon that produces new identities, we collectively took on the new identity, Afrodescendants, at La Ceiba, Honduras, in March 2002.
In our view, the term Minority has taken on additional meanings. The term has taken into consideration who has the minority of wealth and power. Thus, today the term Minority has a qualitative value as well as a quantitative value. An analysis in this regard reveals that in all of the Americas and throughout the Slavery Diaspora, Afrodescendants are in the minority.
Due in part to the efforts of this Working Group, for the first time in the history of our sojourn, we collectively have given name to ourselves: Afrodescendants. As Minorities we remained quiescent for a long period of time, in the names African American, Afro-American, Blacks, Negro, Colored, and so on. But today, we collectively have rebuilt our identity in some nineteen countries in North, Central and South America and throughout the Slavery Diaspora.
Therefore, Afrodescendants are the "New Minorities." We request that the Working Group on Minorities continue to present us to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and to the United Nations, as such, as we recommend an international decade for the recognition of Minorities.
Thank you.
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