At a United Nations event, Vincent Alexander, the chairman of the International Decade for People of African Descent Guyana (IDPADA-G), stated that Afro-Guyanese people are still routinely excluded.
Speaking at the United Nations’ 4th Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent on Monday afternoon, Mr. Alexander said that the present Guyana government had not done anything fair to improve the situation of the nation’s African-descent population.
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Alexander addressed the forum, “The African Guyanese community, descendants of the enslaved, have been systematically marginalized and remain disproportionately at the bottom of the economic and social order. Education, land rights, entrepreneurship, and political representation all reflect this exclusion. Our school curriculum continues to omit the history and the contributions of the Guyanese of African Descent.”
The Guyana government has been taking decisive action to advance development and reduce poverty, geographic disparity, ethnic inequities, and inequality in the country amid rapid economic growth, according to Guyana’s Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton, who spoke at the same Forum just hours before Alexander did.
Alexander, however, called Minister Hamilton’s speech at the Forum “hypocritical,” informing global leaders that despite being deprived of their resources, the same Minister has openly criticized people of African descent for their current situation.
the Chairman of IDPADA-G stated, “Ancestral lands, acquired through the historic village movement, are being seized without compensation through institutional and legal manipulations.”
He went on to say that Guyana’s Human Rights Commission had yet to be established after more than two decades. Mr. Alexander claimed that although the Guyana government has led the charge for reparatory justice on the global scene, it hasn’t done anything to address the country’s internal enslavement legacy.
“The Government of Guyana, while vocally supporting reparations abroad, as was done here today, has not implemented a single dedicated national policy to repair the internal legacies of enslavement. Instead, African Guyanese are blamed for their circumstances, demeaned by public officials as lazy or unworthy. The current governance structure entrenches this conclusion,” he stated.
Alexander specifically called attention to the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), pointing out that a non-Afro-Guyanese person is representing the Commission at the Forum.
Afro-Guyanese are more than capable of representing themselves at the African Forum, according to IDPADA-G and many other Afro-Guyanese groups, which have strongly opposed Shaikh Moeenul Hack, the Chairman of the ERC, attending.
Alexander was met with thunderous ovation when he declared that “the time for polite silence is over” and urged the Forum to support Afro-Guyanese in Guyana “for justice, equality, and repair.”
Under the theme “People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice, and Development,” the Second International Decade for People of African Descent was marked concurrently with the Fourth Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
