Statement to The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
By Gay McDougall
Member, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
April 3, 2017
I am grateful for the invitation to address this 20th session of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD) entitled "Leaving no one behind, people of African descent and the Sustainable Development Goals". I wish to make this intervention on behalf of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of which I am a member.
I understand that this session will be used 1.) to advocate for prioritization of people of African descent in work to achieve SDGs and 2.) to develop simple operational guidelines for use by stakeholders (Governments, UN and civil society) on how to prioritize people of African descent as a particularly discriminated group at all stages of implementation of the SDGs.
I want to particularly speak to the topic people of African descent and the No Poverty (Goal 1) and also to speak to the topic of people of African descent under (Goal 10) on Inequalities Within and Between Countries.
First let me recall that in its General Recommendation No. 34 adopted by CERD in 2011on racial discrimination against people of African descent, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recognized that:
“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.”
The Committee recognized that it is critically important to understand the structural nature of racial discrimination. The Committee understands that particularly in societies where racial prejudice has been endemic over many eras, it becomes self-perpetuating in the social institutions that determine economic survival and social advancement. Discrimination, then, takes on a life of its own separate from any individual’s personal bias, thereby allowing the realities of racism to sink below the level of conscious thought and intent.
CERD has called for robust special measures and affirmative action programs to be instituted particularly in situations of deeply engrained institutional/structural racism to short circuit and overcome the self-serving definitions of merit that often operate within such institutions to justify positions of privilege.[1]
This key understanding about the structural nature of racial inequality must be central to fashioning remedies. It is essential that States have comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and strong enforcement institutions with procedures that can be initiated by victims and their representatives. Additionally, there needs to be a comprehensive approach that recognizes the importance of tackling legal regimes, policies and practices that have negative disparate impacts on communities disadvantaged by racial discrimination, regardless of proof that those policies were intended to create harm.
The Working Grouphas documented important aspects about the African Diaspora that will constitute critical data in efforts to address the economic, social and power disparities that are realities in African Descendant communities in both developing and highly developed societies.
As your Working Group has recognized by focusing this session on the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, the Agenda is currently the engine driving all debates framing development approaches. Additionally, the 2030 Agenda will frame budgetary planning at national levels worldwide.
The commitments made by governments in the 2030 Development Agenda are being hailed as ground-breaking. If those commitments are fulfilled, it will rightly be heralded as the global blueprint that charted the way to the end of poverty as we know it today and the establishment of a new era of human development.
I was privileged to participate in a significant portion of the debates during which I sought to remind the negotiators of the clear lesson learn from the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). That lesson was that we must take deliberate and tailored measures to guarantee that minority communities and Indigenous Peoples be made visible and particularly that their levels of development relative to that of other groups in larger societies be carefully monitored.
The MDGs, the first global development plan, was fraught with serious flaws. Notably, in the eight goals identified for human development and the over forty-eight indicators, there was no explicit consideration given to how different societies should address an uneven distribution of wealth within their nations or how discrimination between population groups might result in entrenched inequalities. So, countries could report on progress toward achieving the MDGs in terms of aggregate statistics which did not reveal inequalities between population groups. Some countries achieved certain of the Goals and even moved from developing country status to middle income status without improving the life circumstances of the most marginalized communities. This was most often the case where there were communities that suffered discrimination based on their race, ethnicity, religion, or caste.
That failure must be of particular concern to those of us who are aware that African Descendant populations around the world are in general among the poorest of the poor.
So, I think that the most revolutionary, indeed the most potentially transformative commitment made by governments as part of the 2030 Development Agenda is “To Leave No One Behind” and in furtherance of that objective governments have pledged to make prominent in their methodology “To take the Last One First.”
This could have profound implications for the circumstances of African Descendant communities in poverty around the world.
it is critical for governments to read this commitment along with SDG Goal 1, to Zero Poverty and SDG Goal 10 to reduce inequality within and between countries. Because the commitment to take the Last First is a cross-cutting pledge to employ a methodology that will guarantee full inclusion, as never before, in every aspect of progress.
There are, however, methodological challenges still to be overcome. There are issues with respect to indicators and data disaggregation that remain to be resolved in ways that will give critical insight into the degree to which minorities, and specifically African Descendant communities, are benefitting or being ignored. The battle is going to be won or lost over data. And so, I urge the WGEPAD to become aggressively engaged in these battles.
First, we must have as detailed a mapping as possible of where African Descendant communities exist, in as precise numbers as possible and with socio-economic data compared to and disaggregated from other groups in those countries. In CERD, we feel it is our responsibility to use the country review process as an opportunity to hold each government accountable for advancing the status of African Descendant groups within its population in accordance with that governments obligations under the 2030 SDG Agenda. But to do that we need statistical data.
Second, disaggregating data by the full range of social and economic groups is essential to realizing the core commitment to Leave No One Behind. Ethnicity is a key marker of social exclusion. But As you know, many governments are reluctant to publish ethnic data for several reasons, and the requirement to do that in the 2030 Agenda is not explicit in applying across all of the Goals. Further,the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs)[2]has not made it an explicit requirement to apply disaggregation across the entire indicator set.
In addition, there are concerns that target 10.2 to “empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status” is undermined by its indicator which relates only to income and fails to disaggregate by five of the groups mentioned (as it lists disaggregation only sex, age and persons with disabilities).
The UN Statistical Commission concluded its 48th Session in March and adopted the SDG Indicators without addressing the concerns about lack of clarity in requirements as to disaggregation that had been raised by several NGOs. However, there will be an annual process to review and refine the indicators, and there will also be a process to develop a regional indicator framework.
We need the WGEPAD to be active in helping to fight these battles that may seem technical, but as we learned from the experience with the MDGs: the devil is in the data.
1
[1] The Committee has demonstrated its understanding of structural discrimination in its General Recommendation on Special Measures and numerous Concluding Observations on country reports.
[2]Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators E/CN.3/2016/2/Rev.1), Annex IV