Chairperson of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Dominique Day called on France Monday to evaluate partnership benefits from working with people of African descent.

UN experts visited France to assess issues relating to people of African descent in France and to provide advice on protecting their rights. The experts collaborated with human rights institutions, UNESCO, and civil society. During the visit, experts focused on existing and potential obstacles stemming from “legacies of colonialism and the trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans.”

Day spoke on these issues during the visit, noting that UNESCO’s “Slave Route Project” has played a key role in “helping to shed light on the historical and legacy issues driving current experiences reported by people of African descent.” She stated that “France should consider the economic and development benefits of partnership with people of African descent.”

She also shared that people of African descent within France “reported that benediction by institutional gatekeepers was indispensable to access and recognition, even in the presence of significant skill and talent.” Day emphasized the need to eliminate “racialized gatekeeping” because it “imposes severe development costs to people of African descent individually and as a whole, and deprives France of a proven economic driver in multiple fields.”

France committed to the UN’s 2030 Agenda, providing that it will make efforts to “leave no one behind.” Still, UN experts found that France’s commitment “may be compromised if it does not address the racialized experiences of people of African descent.”

The experts also “found that the lack of particularized consideration of people of African descent in articulating their commitments to the 2030 Agenda often compromised the reach and effectiveness of Government and other stakeholders efforts for these communities, which continue to be impacted by legacies of colonialism and the trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans, including the mindsets that enabled widespread public acceptance of racial atrocity in the past.”

The experts did not meet with French representatives during their visit, but they plan to share collected information and observations with the French government “to initiate a dialogue based on the human rights commitments of the country.”