Informal Workshop on Afro-descendants in the Americas
Working Group on Minorities
Afternoon Session
May 19, 2001
Statement by Mr. Silis Muhammad
Read by Harriett AbuBakr
For the past three years I have been asking the UN to provide the forum for African American leaders, and this they did. This forum was the closest they could come. I want to thank Mr. Eide, Mr. Bengoa, Mr. Sik Yuen and their experts for giving up their Saturday to sit down with the African American leaders and try to find a place within the existing UN declarations and covenants where we can fit.
We could take another 100 years and create another wheel, but a wheel exists already and all we have to do is step within it. They are here - the expert and technical support - to help us step within the wheel. They recognize that we are all from Africa and that we call ourselves African Americans and Afrodescendants.
Professor Bengoa wrote a working paper that was approved by the Working Group, discussing whether to make race an element of the definition of minority, and discussing whether we should be recognized as a people. Did you read it? Are we not a race, and do we not have a feeling of otherness from those in power because we lost our 'mother tongue', religion and culture when we were brought into slavery?
Forced mixed breeding renders us human but without human rights. Latin Americans, Central Americans and Black Americans in the United States and Canada do not have their human rights. While you are talking about marginalization, discrimination, autonomy - you first need collective human rights and political recognition. That's why these UN experts are here.
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