Afro-descendant communities must be understood in their diverse and complex dimension as Afro-diasporic peoples. They are a constitutive historical and structural component of Latin American and Caribbean societies, stemming from the transatlantic slave trade and processes of human mobility. Simultaneously, they constitute a counter-hegemonic collective political subject. They are characterized by their socio-structural diversity, the plurality of identities and territories, their cultural dynamism, and their capacity for anti-racist agency.

Given their nature, characteristics, and political action, the CLACSO Working Group "Afro-descendants and Counter-Hegemonic Proposals" recognizes them as Afro-descendant peoples, in contrast to the view that has tended to present them as isolated, dehistoricized, and fragmented individuals, collectives, or communities. This perspective allows us to understand who we are and why, which is embodied in the political and cultural category of "Amefricanity," developed by the Afro-Brazilian leader Lélia Gonzalez (1998).

The Afro-descendant population in Latin America and the Caribbean is estimated at 153,3 million people (FAO and ECLAC, 2025), meaning that approximately one in four people in Latin America identifies as Afro-descendant. However, research conducted by the Working Group "Afro-descendants and Counter-Hegemonic Proposals" indicates that these figures show significant underreporting, resulting from limitations in the processes of collecting ethnic and racial data and persistent whitening strategies.

According to the Regional Report on the situation of people of African descent and on the progress of the implementation of the Action Plan of the Decade for People of African Descent in the Americas (2016-2025):

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 25,5% of the population lives in poverty, a decrease compared to previous years. However, people of African descent are 2,5 times more likely to live in chronic poverty compared to other ethnic groups. This indicates that, although overall poverty in the region has decreased, extreme poverty and inequality persist, especially among Afro-descendant populations. (Organization of American States [OAS], 2021, p. 1).

In particular, Afro-descendant women and girls are affected by high levels of inequality, which perpetuates cycles of social exclusion, seriously compromises their quality of life, and further distances them from the full enjoyment of their rights (Campoalegre, Ocoró, Miranda, and Martelo, 2023, p. 19). Likewise, Afro-descendant people who are older adults, people with disabilities, migrants, refugees, LGBTQI+ individuals, among others, face multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination, leading to greater stigmatization and exclusion (ECLAC/UNFPA, 2020). Consequently, Afro-descendant communities are situated at the center of the inequality matrix and on the margins of the prevailing culture of privilege, resulting in higher rates of vulnerability and profound inequity gaps linked to poverty.

The CLACSO Working Group "Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals" bases its approach to the current context on three key processes:

1. The global polycrisis, encompassing all countries and spheres of society and nature, with an emphasis on its economic, ideological, political, legal, cultural, environmental, and digital consequences. Its foundation lies in the breakdown of the Eurocentric-capitalist civilizational paradigm, manifested in a set of interconnected crises impacting the global landscape. This is a racialized, feminized, youth-destroying polycrisis that opposes human mobility and reinforces systemic and structural racism, highlighting its intersections with other systems of oppression. Problems such as poverty, hunger, precarious and insecure employment, barriers to access, retention, and quality in education systems, violence, racial profiling, fragile health systems, and the migration crisis disproportionately affect Afro-descendant communities, in a context of insufficient governmental and non-governmental responses that fail to develop public policies from an anti-racist and intersectional perspective.

2. The reconfiguration of racism, understood as a process of sharpening its most negative tendencies (Campoalegre, 2022), among which the precarity of our lives, the legitimization of hate speech, racist-patriarchal cyberbullying, and the deepening of necropolitics stand out. We understand the latter from the perspective of Achille Mbembe, who defines it as: “The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides largely in the power and capacity to decide who can live and who must die. To make die or to let live thus constitutes the limits of sovereignty, its main attributes” (2018, p. 5).

This situation places Afro-descendants in lethal contexts, the so-called "worlds of death" to which Mbembe refers. It is a juncture characterized, on the one hand, by profound structural inequalities and exclusion with racist foundations, and, on the other, from a legal and political perspective, by the advance of "ethno-ecogenocide." This is understood here as:

(...) a conceptual articulation that seeks to confront the permanent tension between socio-historical and legal truths, present in this type of phenomena in interpretive dispute, advocating for critical, biocentric, decolonizing social, human and intercultural sciences, which seek from the experiences, emerging and dissident experiences of the victims, the construction of dignifying memories, of humanization and of an integral historical justice (Arboleda, 2024, p.163).

However, the opposite pole of this conflict is expressed in the resistance of the peoples, who gain greater levels of organization and internationalization of their struggles, materialized in the multiplicity of counter-hegemonic social movements, among which the Afro-descendant movement stands out for its diversity and impact.

3. The first International Decade for People of African Descent, proclaimed by the United Nations for the period 2015-2024, has concluded. Its central goals were recognition, justice, and development. However, the assessment shows limited progress, primarily focused on recognition, while the goals of justice and development have regressed. In this context, it is imperative to reconfigure the anti-racist agenda in a Second International Decade for People of African Descent, which, beginning in January 2025, will extend until December 2034 (Campoalegre, 2025).

In the face of this second International Decade for People of African Descent, the Afro-descendant movement is developing new arenas of struggle, focused on historical reparations as an emerging and comprehensive paradigm of the anti-racist fight. The promotion of policies of historical reparations, the adoption of the International Declaration on the Promotion, Protection and Full Respect of the Rights of People of African Descent, and the promotion of Afro-centric development in our communities and peoples are central to the struggle in the field of human rights.

The theme that drives the creation and development of this CLACSO Working Group in the academic and political field of Afro-descendants has high theoretical, social, and intellectual relevance. In this regard, following Aníbal Quijano, this is based on the fact that: "Racism in everyday social relations is not, therefore, the only manifestation of the coloniality of power. But it is, without a doubt, the most perceptible and omnipresent. For this very reason, it has not ceased to be the main field of conflict." (2017, p. 18).

Indeed, the fight against racism is the raison d'être of our CLACSO Working Group. This raison d'être is further reinforced by its strategic importance in the context of the 25th anniversary of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and other Forms of Intolerance, hereinafter referred to as the Durban Conference.

This conference produced the Declaration and the anti-racist action plan that guides efforts toward historical reparations. We embrace this challenge through the collaboration between academia and the Afro-descendant movement, seeking to deconstruct conflicting rights, propose specific actions in the field of public policy, continue anti-racist training processes, and advance toward sustainable and inclusive development that realizes the global goal set forth as a principle of the 2030 Agenda.

"Leaving No One Behind" is the central and transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It represents the unequivocal commitment of all UN Member States to eradicate poverty in all its forms, end discrimination and exclusion, and reduce the inequalities and vulnerabilities that leave people behind and undermine their potential and that of humanity as a whole. From our Working Group, we hope to create scenarios that allow us to advance and give concrete form to this premise in a real and effective way.

Leaving No One Behind not only means reaching the poorest, but also requires combating discrimination and growing inequalities within and between countries, and their root causes (United Nations, n.d., p.1).

Such a global goal demands an effective and persistent deconstruction of the historical foundations upon which structural and systemic racism in our societies rests. It is no coincidence that the United Nations has assessed the achievement of these goals as "worrying," confirming that: "Despite the efforts made to date, it is noted that only about 15% of the targets are on track to be met, while almost half are progressing slowly or have stalled." (United Nations, 2023, p. 1).

In response, a call has been made to the international community to launch a Second International Decade for People of African Descent to reverse this situation. Within this framework, we ask ourselves what will happen with the second Decade: Will it again fall short, due to the failure to meet its goals, as happened with the first, or will it succeed in bringing about substantive transformation? We strive for a positive answer to these questions, which are crucial for deepening democracy and equality.

In this regard, the CLACSO Working Group proposes to develop a series of academic, political, and collaborative actions with the Afro-diasporic movement, within the framework of the Second International Decade for People of African Descent and the draft International Declaration for the Promotion, Defense, Guarantee, and Full Respect of the Rights of People of African Descent promoted by the United Nations (2025). It also plans to collaborate with national and regional organizations dedicated to the promotion and protection of the rights of people of African descent.

The academic and political relevance of this instrument lies in its potential as a substantial advancement in international law, as it constitutes the first international instrument aimed at making visible the individual and collective rights of Afro-descendant peoples, historically demanded in the struggle against the systemic and structural racism that has limited the development and well-being of our peoples. In this sense, we strive to ensure that this Declaration effectively responds to the demands of Afro-descendant peoples and guarantees their rights in all spheres of society, at the global, national, and local levels. Recognizing that, like a Decade, a Declaration alone is not sufficient, but it expands the possibilities for struggle and political influence, this will be a fundamental area of ​​academic and political action for the Working Group.

One of the central objectives of this Working Group is to contribute to ensuring that this Declaration enshrines historical, comprehensive, and emancipatory reparations for Afro-descendant peoples. This fundamentally implies the establishment of specific standards that recognize us in a threefold dimension: as universal citizens, as communities with the capacity for self-determination, and as peoples with their own identity and cultural practices. For Latin America and the Caribbean, it is crucial that it be recognized that we are founders of nation-states and that our existence predates current territorial boundaries.

The Working Group on Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals takes as its structuring axis the historical reparation of Afro-descendant peoples, in its integral and intersectional character, debating and influencing the following thematic lines and political action:

1. Maroon epistemologies and pedagogy, based on ancestral knowledge and the theoretical and practical contributions of Afro-descendant thought.

2. Black decolonial feminisms, as a historical project of struggle, of an intergenerational, intersectional, and developing nature. It is also a strategy of education and solidarity and an ethic of transformation.

3. Ethno-education in the fight against epistemic racism, knowing that:

Epistemic racism cannot be understood outside of this structure that racializes bodies, histories, knowledge, and subjects in order to maintain the epistemic, cultural, racial, and material privilege of certain groups. Epistemic privilege is understood here as a set of practices that favor the ways of speaking, seeing the world, and interpreting it of the groups that hold power in the spaces of knowledge production and dissemination (Ocoró, 2021; pp. 27-28).

4. Public policies from an anti-racist and intersectional perspective that impact the promotion, exercise, guarantee, and full respect of the rights of Afro-descendant peoples. Making a second International Decade for People of African Descent a reality, focused on historical reparations, is our main goal for this three-year period.

This involves continuing a path of counter-hegemonic transformations within and outside of CLACSO, one that merges with Afro-descendant communities. Thus, this CLACSO Working Group has been able to, and will continue to, weave a powerful and collaborative academic network, actively engaged in political action and struggle, consolidated under the banner of AFROCLACSO. Therefore, we intend to keep moving forward, because CLACSO, too, "will be anti-racist or racist, or it will not be" (Vommaro, 2025).