Presentation at U.N. 25th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action – General Assembly, 81st session

September 28, 2026
High-Level Meeting
81st Session of the UNGA
“Mobilizing Global Public Support for the Full and Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action”
“Youth Leadership: Embedding anti-racism across everyday decisions, policy-making, institutions and technologies” Panel

Beginning at 17, I was actively involved in concrete actions against racism and racial discrimination. In retrospect, I’ll share with you what I would have wanted to know when I was a young person in the midst of a turbulent world. It’s important to begin with the wisdom imparted by two great Black thinkers of the 20th century. Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X.

Fanon, in the midst of Algeria’s national liberation struggle against French colonialism, said “Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” Malcolm’s words are equally indispensable to assuming the task which Fanon laid out. “Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research.” For young people, in their determination to build an anti-racist world – know that you must confront the reality that your lived history will be targeted with distortion and erasure. For African people throughout the Diaspora, in our demand for reparations, we are in a constant battle to uphold the truth of the crimes committed against our ancestors and continuing against us today.

The Durban Declaration and Program of Action [DDPA] and the process which led to its adoption is a case study for young people committed to advancing concrete actions against racism and racial discrimination, for them to see the value of our historical development as a people and to learn from the past, in order to move forward in the fight for equality and justice.

Crimes and Criminal Enterprises
Why was/is the DDPA so important and yet so controversial. First, let me unequivocally declare that the DDPA represents an historic victory for African people – a Pan-African achievement.

The DDPA states that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery WERE CRIMES. Do not confuse the titles: Queens, Kings, Dukes, Duchesses, Ministers, Lords and Ladies, Popes, Bishops, Bankers, Admirals, Captains, Generals, Shipowners, Trade organizations, Businessmen, Companies, sovereign countries – with who they actually were and what they did. They were criminals. Just like the Mafia. But more ruthless. They are subject not simply to repair the damage they caused but to prosecution. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations.

The Durban World Conference was first and foremost about African peoples’ long unfulfilled demand for reparations from the criminals who have evaded punishment. At the very first International PrepCom for the World Conference in Geneva in May 2000, the U.S. Ambassador drew a red line, stating that if the World Conference included “compensation” (i.e. Reparations) on its agenda, the U.S. would not participate. The US eventually withdrew in the first week of the actual conference but did not have the courage to tell its own Black citizenry the real reason why they did so. Instead they cloaked their retreat into the night behind the baseless charge of “anti-Semitism.” And since that remains their position to this day, I only ask that you read the DDPA and you will not find any anti-Semitic language in there.

The December 12th Movement and the National Black United Front (NBUF), brought 400 Black people (The Durban 400), mainly from the United States, to Durban. Many of those 400 were in their late teens and early twenties. They learned first hand about the international mechanisms for anti-racist work and took those lessons home with them to carry out that work in their respective communities. Iman Drammeh and Al Santana produced a documentary on our experience, “The Durban 400”. It is available on YouTube and is an invaluable primer for all, but particularly young people on the role of an organized civil society in effecting international change.

In the international and regional PrepComs which preceded the actual conference, we worked closely with People of African Descent from throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe and the Pacific Region. In that process we formed an Afro-Descendant Caucus which agreed to prioritize three issues in lobbying the countries of the world around the DDPA. Those issues were: i) Declaration of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Slavery and Colonialism as Crimes Against Humanity; ii) Reparations for the victims’ descendants; iii) acknowledgment of the economic basis of racism. Our combined organization of forces provided critical civil society lobbying support to the leadership given by the African and Caribbean countries in securing the consensus around the DDPA.

THE CAMPAIGN TO MAKE THE DDPA DISAPPEAR
From its adoption by consensus on September 8, 2001, the DDPA has been the target of a “disappearance/denial campaign” led by the WEO Group. These countries/criminals are either the colonizers or their settler-colony states which were the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans [1]. Their opposition is reflected in the failure to implement the DDPA and on the international level by exerting its disproportionate influence on the UN to abandon its normal protocols regarding World Conferences. Two brief examples. One) The UN did not convene its five-year World Conference follow-up to Durban, until 8 years later, and only after tremendous opposition was put forward by Civil Society Organizations. Two) Today’s high-level segment is being convened at the end of the General Debate, when most heads of state and representatives have already left the U.S. rather than on the day before the General Debate begins, when it is normally held and when such a segment would attract global media attention.

WGEPAD
One of the signature achievements of the DDPA was the call to establish a Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. The WG has been a consistently effective instrument in fulfilling its mandate – to study the problems of racial discrimination faced by people of African descent living in the African Diaspora and make proposals for the elimination of racial discrimination against people of African descent.

Unfortunately, the WG does not receive the institutional support from the UN that it formerly did. In one recent incident, the members, who are non-paid experts from around the world, had to use their own funds to attend a meeting. The number of country visits that they carry out have also been reduced, as has the number of members who will be funded to attend the country visits.

These recent moves to wither away the WGEPAD have been accompanied by a de facto campaign to replace it with the newly created (2022) Permanent Forum on People of African Descent [PFPAD]. The existence of one does not preclude the continuation of the other. You may draw your own conclusions in noting that two of the countries which have vehemently opposed the DDPA, the U.S. and Canada, have been two of the most fervent country boosters of the PFPAD.

Lesson Learned:
The DDPA established that a crime of unimaginable horrors was committed. It made Reparations for African people a global issue. The task now is to make what’s on paper, take on reality in African people’s lives.

THEY STOLE US! THEY SOLD US! THEY OWE US!
REPARATIONS NOW!

Roger Wareham, Esq. for the December 12th Movement International Secretariat

[1] The language, built on the DDPA foundation, is more historically accurate and was adopted by the UNGA on March 25, 2026, Resolution A/RES/80/250, “Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity”