IDPADA-G appeals to UN forum to stand with Afro-Guyanese

Last Updated on Monday, 14 April 2025, 22:21 by Writer

The International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly – Guyana (IDPADA-G) on Monday urged the United Nations’ 4th Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent to lend its support in addressing social, economic and political marginalisation of Afro-Guyanese.

IDPADA-G Chairman Vincent Alexander told the debate the “true narrative” about the state of people of African descent in Guyana, in contrast to remarks by Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton. “The time for polite silence is over. We ask this forum to stand with us for justice, equality and repair,” said Mr Alexander, a long-time supporter of the mainly Afro-Guyanese supported People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) political opposition party.

Mr Alexander told the forum that the descendants of enslaved Africans have been “systematically marginalised and disproportionately at the bottom of the economic and social order.” He added that education, land rights, entrepreneurship and political representation all “reflect this exclusion.” The General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), Bharrat Jagdeo, who is also a former President of Guyana and currently 2nd Vice President, is on record as saying that the conditions of Afro-Guyanese are far better off compared to the PNCR’s time in office.

The IDPADA-G official said Guyana’s school curriculum continue to omit the history and contributions of Guyanese of African descent. He said ancestral lands, acquired through the historic village movement, are being seized without compensation. Instead, he said that was being done through institutional and legal manipulations.

Despite legal provisions, according to the official, a functioning human rights commission is yet to be constituted 20 years on. Now AFC Leader, Attorney-at-Law Nigel Hughes had filed a High Court case against the Guyana government challenging the protracted failure to appoint that commission.

According to the IDPADA-G Chairman, the Guyana government has been giving lip-service to the need for reparations because it has so far not implemented a “single national policy to repair the internal legacies of enslavement.” “Instead, Afro-Guyanese are blamed for their circumstances, demeaned by public officials as lazy or unworthy,” he also said.

The current governance structure, he added, entrenches such exclusion even within the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) whose representative to the UN Forum is not an Afro-Guyanese “notwithstanding the African community asking otherwise.”

Mr Alexander is also an opposition nominated member of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).

IDPADA-G’s annual subsidy from government was withdrawn about three years ago on grounds that the money was not trickling down to ordinary Afro-Guyanese.

Several representatives of Afro-Guyanese organisations were subsequently called in and handed donations.

A number of newly-formed Afro-Guyanese organisations, believed to be sympathetic to the ruling PPPC were then established.