At COP16, calls for greater HE access for Afro-descendants

Reparations for structural, institutional, and systemic racism inflicted upon people of African descent (Afro-descendants) living in Latin America and the Caribbean should be rooted in enhanced access to higher education, according to Colombian Vice-President Francia Márquez.

Marquez, who is the first Afro-descendant woman vice-president of Colombia, said there is an urgent need for enhanced opportunities for access to higher education for people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean as both a reparations measure and to address the deep inequities that prevent these communities from realising their potential.

Amidst a push for recognition of Afro-descendant communities in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) negotiations held in Cali, Colombia, from 21 October to 1 November, Marquez argued that limited access to higher education for African people especially in Colombia is limiting their visibility and meaningful participation in critical global matters such as biodiversity, climate change and the regional development agenda.

This will jeopardise the realisation of the UN’s Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development that demands that no-one be left behind.

As of 2022, the population of Afro-descendant peoples in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is estimated at 153.7 million people, representing 23.7% of the region’s population.

Research tools

Marquez urged governments and religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church, to invest in enhancing access to education for Afro-descendant communities including access to research centres that give communities the tools to participate in development agendas.

She was speaking on the sidelines of COP16 during the inauguration of the Baobab Innovation Center for Racial, Gender, and Environmental Justice in Cali.

The centre, supported by the Ford Foundation, will champion research and develop tools that enhance environmental justice, international collaboration and advocacy for Afro-descendant self-governance and inclusion in environmental policy-making at COP16, particularly regarding demands for recognition of communal land rights, issues of environmental degradation, historical injustices faced by Afro-descendant communities and calls for reparations as part of environmental justice.

Lauding the African Union and African countries for supporting Afro-descendants’ push for the inclusion of Afro-descendant communities at COP16, Marquez urged African governments to strengthen unity beyond Africa’s borders to Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Higher education inequalities

According to recent statistics from Anny Ocoró Loango, a researcher of the Higher Education and Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America Programme, Afro-descendants in Latin America, especially women and young people, are most affected by the inequality which manifests in higher education.

UNESCO data suggests that challenges in accessing higher education for these communities persist. For example, in Brazil, Afro-descendants aged 25 and over with completed studies account for approximately 10% of the population, compared to approximately 23%, of non-Afro-descendants.

In Colombia, the difference is 9% to 14% between Afro and non-Afro. In Ecuador, the ratio is approximately 10% and 15% between Afro and non-Afro, respectively.

Loango argues that “there will be no plural education as long as there are historical silences about the contributions of Afro-descendants and indigenous people in the construction of the nation and the present life of our societies.”

Marquez drew attention to ongoing impoverishment of Afro-descendants in the region.

“The Pacific region in Colombia, largely occupied by Afro-descendants, is one of the most neglected areas in terms of access to education, health, water and electricity. Without this we cannot progress. We need our children to have access not to guns but education … it will be a clear indicator of our society moving forward,” said Marquez.

Afro-descendants, she said, have experienced impoverishment which “began by tearing out our language, by tearing away the possibilities of producing knowledge.”

She said that oral transmission of knowledge through generations for the black people has been the only option as writing was prohibited to the Afro-descendants during the process of colonisation and slavery.

Call for relevance

Research centres such as the Baobab Innovation Center, Marquez said, would pave the way for scientific thinking, for confronting data, creating new narratives, and new epistemic investigations that also break with hegemonic investigations.

“But one says, we educate ourselves for what? We educate ourselves to be free or to remain in a condition of mental slavery, which is part of that imposition of a hegemonic academy?

“We need a relevant education and in this country the Afro-descendant population has strived for a relevant ethnic education that does not erase us, that does not make us feel ashamed, but that makes us feel proud and that reaffirms who we are as people,” said Marquez.

Through higher education, she said, Afro-descendants’ economic and social development will be enhanced, improving the living conditions for families and helping to end illegal economies such as drug trafficking.

“The illegal economy has led us to death. Our people have suffered the most terrible … consequences. It is education that will contribute to peace, that will contribute to closing the gaps of inequity and inequality to social justice. I would not be here as vice-president if I had not received both academic and university training,” she said.

Group of experts

According to the preliminary findings of the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent released in May this year, efforts by the Colombian government to strengthen educational processes in various territories “are insufficient to ensure full schools’ accessibility to all children of African descent.

“Testimonies reveal that several families are extremely reluctant to send their children to school due to risks of forced recruitment in armed groups. For people of African descent living in the most remote areas, distance to schools remains a challenge and results in school dropouts.

“Regulatory barriers consisting of minimum pupil requirements as a prerequisite to teacher allocation have a serious indirect effect of leaving small communities inhabited in rural and dispersed areas with no teachers,” the experts said after a 10-day visit to the country.

The group said that Afro-descendants were further limited by barriers to higher education such as affordability and the physical inaccessibility of higher education institutions of good quality offering a full range of training options.

Even students on scholarships, the group found, could drop out of universities due to harsh conditions and an inability to meet the additional accommodation costs.

The group urged the government of Colombia to “confront all inequalities in access to education for people of African descent” by conducting curriculum reforms that ensure Afro-descendants are “appropriately represented in textbooks, including their history and contributions to the Colombia society”.

In his address at the opening plenary of the High Level Segment of COP16 on 29 October, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for the engagement of “all parts of society, in particular indigenous peoples, people of African descent, and local communities”, in order to enhance inclusivity and equity.