CBESA present at the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
April 14-17, 2026
Dr. Michael McEachrane, the Senior Research Fellow at CBESA and a Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD), made significant contributions to the Forum’s landmark 5th Session, held in Geneva from April 14-17, 2026, under the theme Expanding the Human Rights of People of African Descent under the Second International Decade for People of African Descent.
On April 14, Dr. McEachrane delivered the opening statement, setting the thematic and political tone for the Session. He situated the Forum’s work within the context of a historic UN General Assembly resolution, adopted weeks earlier, declaring the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity in recorded history. Invoking the decolonial spirit of Pan-Africanism and the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), he called on delegates to move beyond incremental domestic rights frameworks and address structural racial inequalities within and among countries and the global economy that are rooted in the lasting consequences of enslavement and colonialism. His statement urged the Session to serve as a moral compass for future generations.
In his intervention during the first panel of the Session, “25 Years After the DDPA — Strengthening Global Solidarity”, Dr. McEachrane argued that the unfulfilled promise of the DDPA reflects both insufficient political will and the absence of binding international law. He offered five concrete recommendations, including expanding the scope of the draft declaration on the human rights of people of African descent to include Africans, convening an Ad Hoc Committee session on complementary standards for reparatory and environmental justice, and commissioning a comprehensive academic study through the Forum’s new Global Network for the Study of Africans and People of African Descent, which is based at CBESA.
For the second panel, “Reparatory Justice and Cultural Heritage — Museums and Restitution”, Dr. McEachrane offered three recommendations for advancing the restitution of cultural objects acquired from Africa and its Diaspora during the colonial era, including commissioning a UNESCO mapping report and revisiting the 1970 Convention’s principle of non-retroactivity in light of the General Assembly’s recent resolution recognizing racialized chattel enslavement as a crime against humanity.
At a side event on April 15 “The Pan African Journey: Lessons of Transformation and Strategy”, organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Dr. McEachrane gave a presentation on the Pan-African journey and its relationship to the work of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. Participating alongside African Union and civil society representatives, he offered a multi-dimensional structural analysis of the history and philosophy of Pan-Africanism and made recommendations towards the future of Pan-Africanism at the UN grounded in the interconnected legacies of enslavement and colonialism.
At the fourth and final panel of the Session, “The Permanent Forum at Five — Mandate, Achievements and Opportunities”, Dr. McEachrane made a principled case for expanding the Forum’s mandate to encompass both Africans and people of African descent, noting the convergence of the African Union and CARICOM behind a shared global reparatory justice agenda. He argued that limiting the Forum’s mandate to the Diaspora is both politically inconsistent and analytically untenable given the structural interconnections within and among countries documented in the DDPA.