“We have set ourselves the task“, together with the Ministry of the Environment and the Colombian Foreign Ministry, to “promote that within the COP (…) the category of Afro-descendant peoples be inserted,” added the vice president.
COP16, the main United Nations conference on biodiversity, will be held from October 21 to November 1 in Cali (southwest), Colombia’s third largest city, where about 12,000 people are expected to attend.
“We ask Brazil to accompany us in that request“added Márquez, being a country with a majority Afro-descendant population. This recognition would be “an enormous tool” for the “biodiverse” territories that ancestral groups occupy.”
It is a strategy that, according to Márquez, will allow “protecting the knowledge” and “biodiversity of these territories.”
The descendants of African slaves represent 21% of the population of Latin America, that is, 154 million people, says a document signed by social organizations that met in Bogotá until Friday to discuss the territorial rights of black communities.
The coalition presented a document with 16 recommendations, in which they request the inclusion of the term “Afro-descendants” in the future agreement on biodiversitythe right to “historical reparation” for the “transatlantic slave trade” and protection mechanisms for the territories of Afro communities.
Following the election of Colombia’s first leftist president, Gustavo Petro, in August 2022, Francia Márquez, a social leader with strong community roots, became the country’s first black vice president.
His access to the highest spheres of power highlighted the persistent racism in Colombia, where almost 9% of the 50 million inhabitants are of African origin. Márquez is constantly the target of racist attacks on social networks.
