CERD/C/GC/34
Formulates the following recommendations addressed to States parties:
I. Description
1.
For the purposes of this general recommendation, people of African descent are
those referred to as such by the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and who
identify themselves as people of African descent.
2.
The Committee is aware that millions of people of African descent are living in
societies in which racial discrimination places them in the lowest positions in social
hierarchies.
II. Rights
3.
People of African descent shall enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms in
accordance with international standards, in conditions of equality and without any
discrimination.
4.
People of African descent live in many countries of the world, either dispersed
among the local population or in communities, where they are entitled to exercise, without
discrimination, individually or in community with other members of their group, as
appropriate, the following specific rights:
(a)
The right to property and to the use, conservation and protection of lands
traditionally occupied by them and to natural resources in cases where their ways of life and
culture are linked to their utilization of lands and resources;
(b)
The right to their cultural identity, to keep, maintain and foster their mode of
life and forms of organization, culture, languages and religious expressions;
(c)
The right to the protection of their traditional knowledge and their cultural
and artistic heritage;
(d)
The right to prior consultation with respect to decisions which may affect
their rights, in accordance with international standards.
5.
The Committee understands that racism and racial discrimination against people of
African descent are expressed in many forms, notably structural and cultural.
6.
Racism and structural discrimination against people of African descent, rooted in the
infamous regime of slavery, are evident in the situations of inequality affecting them and
reflected, inter alia, in the following domains: their grouping, together with indigenous
peoples, among the poorest of the poor; their low rate of participation and representation in
political and institutional decision-making processes; additional difficulties they face in
access to and completion and quality of education, which results in the transmission of
poverty from generation to generation; inequality in access to the labour market; limited
social recognition and valuation of their ethnic and cultural diversity; and a
disproportionate presence in prison populations.
7.
The Committee observes that overcoming the structural discrimination that affects
people of African descent calls for the urgent adoption of special measures (affirmative
action), as established in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (arts. 1, para. 4, and 2, para. 2). The need for special measures has
been the subject of reiterated observations and recommendations made to the State parties
under the Convention, summarized in general recommendation No. 32 (2009) on the
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