Revised and Extended Remarks of Ari Sesu Merretazon to the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Coordinated in collaboration with the United States Human Rights Network
Date: July 7, 2016
To: Ms. Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, Chairperson, UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
From: Minister Ari S. Merretazon, Former National Co-Chair, and Former Northeast Region Representative, Member NCOBRA-Philadelphia Chapter.
Subject: Revised and Extended Remarks for the Record of the January 19-20 UN Working Group Visit to Baltimore Maryland, USA
Greetings, I am Minister Ari Merretazon, one of the selected participants, in fact, the last, to make remarks to the UN Working Group of Experts On People of African Descent.
Thank you for allowing me to revise and extend my remarks for the record of the UN Working Group Public Hearing January 19-20, 2016, in Baltimore, Maryland. May your leadership continue to bring good into the world and let none be lost. The participants thank you for your mandated visit to the City of Baltimore, the “Hard City” by the sea, (as described by songstress, vocalist, pianist Nina Simone), to identify and examine in detail the problem and situation of people of African descent in the United States. My remarks included a proposal that the UN Working Group visit with U.S. Congressman John Conyers to discuss the passage of H.R. 40, a bill to establish the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act: “To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African- Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
Additionally, thank you for supporting and including my initial remark that the UN Working Group urge the US to pay reparations to Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States(DAEUS). All of the problems, situations, and recommendations identified by the UN Working Group represent key areas that should be negotiated in the framework of a reciprocal zero-sum reparations accord, as a matter of public policy. At a minimum, the following injury areas, experienced for centuries by DAEUS, as identified by N’COBRA, should be the starting point for a negotiated settlement. My revised and extended remarks include supporting injury area abstracts and recommended reparatory justice outcomes and impacts the UN Working should support and urge the US to accept and negotiate.
