Concept Note for the creation of the African Diaspora Directorate

Friends of the African Union Concept Note for the 24th Session of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (25-29 March 2019)

Members of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent who meet on The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent public session Data for Racial Justice will be held in Geneva from 25-29 March 2019. This thematic session will involve specific focus on its mapping exercise and bring together experts to discuss the human rights situation of people of African descent globally. It will also involve a comprehensive look at varied intersections of big data and racial justice (and injustice) globally.
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Friends of the African Union (FAU), which is an Ohio non-reporting unincorporated association (2012), and the Cincinnati Empowerment Corporation (1999) which does business as FAU Global Operations Center (2019) and its public beneficiary company FAU EDcorp, Inc. (2016) and Friends of the African Union smartWISE Economic Development, Inc. (2018) is proposing solutions to problems experienced by the African Diaspora in the USA during the International Decade for People of African Descent through the creation of the African Diaspora Directorate.

The African Diaspora Directorate (ADD) is to be a new unit of FAU designed to serve as a catalyst to facilitate the involvement of African Diasporan peoples around the world in the affairs of the Africa Union. ADD is proposed to have four divisions (1) the Secretariat of the African Diaspora’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (2) the Civil Society Division (3) Diaspora Division and the (4) Operations Division. The African Diaspora’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council, which is composed of civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-state organs is to be established in the USA by August 25th 2019.

The creation of the ADD Operations Division coincides with a Big Data Revolution that has the capacity to both uplift and injure people of African descent, both individually and systemically.  This division will work, in 2019, with The Working Group of Experts of the People of African Descent to examine aspects of these issues, facilitate public debate, and promote engagement by varied stakeholders with a focus on Hamilton County Ohio in the United States.

We will use an in-depth study of Hamilton County Ohio to create a framework to study the human rights situation of people of African descent in the United States of America.

We address the question in the United Nations Concept Note 24th Session of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent 25-29 March 2019 in its Request for data-guidance note, “What data, analysis and studies exist on the composition of the population; the human rights situation; and on measures to address racial disparities and provide redress and remedy for racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance and historical injustices constituting crimes against humanity.” using these sources”

1.    US Census Bureau Profile America Facts for Features: CB19-FF.01 FEB. 26, 2019

2.    The UN HRC’s 2015 Universal Periodic Review (#UNUPR) of the USA as part of the Second Cycle with a date of consideration: Monday 11 May 2015 – 9.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. and our Friends of the African Union New Future Foundation solution response uUN Doc JS51_UPR22_USA_E_Main

3.    Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent – visit to United States of America, 19-29 January 2016 (A/HRC/33/61/Add.2

4.    Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights – Mission to the United States of America (A/HRC/38/33/Add.1)

5.    Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – Mission to the United States of America (A/HRC/36/37/Add.2)

6.    Report of the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children – Mission to the United States of America (A/HRC/35/37/Add.2)

7.    Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association – Mission to the United States of America (A/HRC/35/28/Add.2)

8.    Congressional Black Caucus Report (2017) We Have A Lot To Lose: Solutions To Advance Black Families In The 21st Century

9.    An Overview of Black  or African American Population Statistics Greg Pewett Training Specialist, Education and Training Branch Customer Liaison and Marketing Services Office U.S. Census Bureau November 2016

10.  The State of Black America®, the National Urban League’s seminal annual publication now in its 41st edition (2017)

11.  The State of Black Cincinnati 2015: A TALE OF TWO CITIES by the Urban League of  Greater Southwestern Ohio

12.  Black Dollars Matter: The Sales Impact of Black Consumers, Nielsen Homescan, Total U.S., for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 30, 2017.

13.  Plan Cincinnati (2012) a City Planning Guide

14.  Cincinnati Empowerment Zone Plan Application (1999)

We acknowledge that our cumulative gross product is over $1.2 Trillion Dollars but also accept that African Americans continue to lag behind their white counterparts.

When it comes to equal access to employmenthousingeducation, and other areas like the fact that of the USA’s 2.6M African American owned businesses less that 122k employ more than 1-person African American have gaps because of historic racism that can be quantified.

Friends of the African Union on this day of this Historic Black History Month, February 28th, 2019, pledge, “We as Citizens of the United States of America who are decedent from Africans made new citizens in 1868, 150 years ago , in order to form a more perfect Union, establish equality of justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the equal blessings of liberty to ourselves and our future generations, in the USA and throughout the world, do ordain as organized civil society and establish this month a working group to establish a 150 year (2019-2169) Black Folks Plan (#2019BlackFolksPlan) that is to deliver its work by August 25th 2019. This date being the 400th year anniversary of landing of the first Africans in the English colonies in 1619 at Old Point Comfort, which would later become part of the state of Virginia, one of the founding states of the United States of America.”

We do this work now after 400 years in the English Colonies as a solution to the results of the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of African slavery in the USA for 77 years (1788-1865) and the 168 years (1619 – 1787) in the progenitors to the 13 English colonies that made up the United States of America. It is a solution to the effects subsequently de jure & de facto of racial & economic discrimination on the descendant Americans of America’s African slavery as detailed in this proposed body of work for the Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent.

From our beginning 400 years ago on August 25th, 1619 at Old Point Comfort as Africans and then as African Americans (1868) we have played a vital role in the building of the USA and now it is time we rebuild our global community, first in the USA, then in unity with the African Diaspora and by 2020 in the Nations of the current African Union.

FAU recognizes that becoming Americans did not create economic opportunity, rather the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day in the practice of institutionalized racism on Americans of African Descent. We will build a solution for that called the #2019BlackFolksPlan.

The #2019BlackFolksPlan is to be a solution based on our work presented to the Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent in 2017 to provide a solutions to the practice of institutionalized racism in government and business on the descendant Americans of African heritage from 1868 through today and as important their effects subsequently de jure & de facto of that racial & economic discrimination.

Hershel Daniels Junior

Chairman, Friends of the African Union