UNFPA holds forum in Ghana on connecting African diaspora

The discussion board is a part of a UN initiative to advance rights of individuals of African descent and join the diaspora to Africa.

UN Under Secretary-General & Executive Director of UNFPA Natalia Kanem and visiting Costa Rican Vice-President Epsy Campbell Barr, welcomed by His Royal Majesty Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III, King of Akwamu in eastern Ghana
UN Beneath Secretary-Normal & Government Director of UNFPA Natalia Kanem and visiting Costa Rican Vice-President Epsy Campbell Barr, welcomed by His Royal Majesty Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III, King of Akwamu in japanese Ghana on April 21, 2022 [Courtesy: UNFPA Ghana]

A high-level diaspora discussion board has held in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, on advocating for the popularity of the variety and cultural contributions of individuals of African descent to the event of societies world wide.

Convened by the United Nations Inhabitants Fund (UNFPA), it had in attendance high-profile personalities together with Natalia Kamen, UN Beneath-secretary Normal and UNFPA govt director, Costa Rican Vice President Epsy Campbell Barr and her Ghanaian counterpart, Mahamudu Bawumia.

The discussion board, The Return Mission, is a part of a UN initiative to advance the rights of individuals of African descent.

Talking on the Accra discussion board on Friday, Kamen, additionally of African descent, acknowledged that the discussion board afforded “an unprecedented alternative to strengthen cooperation for our collective progress and to advertise fairness, therapeutic, and social justice for our communities throughout the globe.”

On her half, Costa Rica’s vice chairman, Epsy Campbell Barr, emphasised the significance of realizing the dream of Jamaican-American mental Marcus Garvey’s dream of a worldwide union of Black individuals.

“Africans have been victims of systemic historic racism and exclusion, and it's time to fulfil the promise of recognition, justice, and improvement,” she mentioned. “We should be a part of forces as a single continent and advance insurance policies that strengthen the connection and ties between Africa and the diaspora.”

There are an estimated 200 million individuals of African descent within the Americas, with hundreds of thousands extra in different areas of the world outdoors of Africa.

In December 2013, the UN Normal Meeting declared 2015–2024 the Worldwide Decade for Individuals of African Descent and urged the worldwide neighborhood to acknowledge individuals of African descent as a definite group whose human rights have to be promoted and guarded.

The declaration’s theme is “Individuals of African descent: recognition, justice, and improvement.”

The UNGA additionally declared August 31 every year as an Worldwide day for individuals of African descent.

In the meantime, the African Union has additionally declared the African Diaspora as its sixth area, alongside North, South, East, West, Central and the Diaspora Africa.

Ghana, the place the discussion board is holding, has been a distinguished voice within the institution of stronger relations between Africa and the African diaspora.

In 2019, President Nana Akufo-Addo launched the ‘Yr of Return’ to encourage the African diaspora to return to the continent, notably Ghana, to settle and make investments as a part of a commemoration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the primary group of enslaved Africans in America.

The West African nation has a protracted historical past with the African diaspora due to its essential function in what ultimately turned referred to as the Trans-Atlantic slave commerce.

Its 550-kilometre shoreline is dotted with forts and castles that served as slave dungeons, facilitating the procuring, transporting, and promoting of black Africans as slaves to European international locations and North America.

Kamen and Barr visited a few of these historic websites to relive the travails of enslaved Africans. Certainly one of their stops was on the Assin Manso Slave River Web site, which served because the place the place the enslaved from throughout the nation had been made to relaxation and have their final bathtub on African soil earlier than being despatched to the dungeons of Elmina and Cape Coast Fortress.

The UN delegation additionally visited the dungeons.

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