A Brief History

On December 23, 2013 the member states of the United Nations passed a resolution dedicating a decade to addressing the challenges confronting people of African Descent globally. During the Decade (2015-2024), nations are called upon to create programs focused on recognition, justice, and development for people of African descent.
The Cooperative Republic of Guyana is a signatory to the UN Declaration. His Excellency President David Granger in his speech before a Cuffy 250 annual forum in August 2016 responded to the UN Declaration by urging the African Guyanese community to create a mechanism to address the UN mandate. He set out five broad areas of focus: economics, employment, education, equity and expiation. The goal is to address the historic and present discrimination against African descendants.
A Steering Committee of African Guyanese organizations’ deliberations ultimately led to the signing of a Compact and to the creation of the current structure – the International Decade for People of Africa Descent Assembly-Guyana Country Coordinating Mechanism (IDPADA-G CCM). The Government of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana fully funded IDPADA-G in its 2018 budget.

EXPAND AFRICAN GUYANESE SHARE IN THE NATION’S ECONOMY

Promote economic advancement and empowerment, economic agency and self-confidence; expand access to business and entrepreneurial training, access to investment capital, and capital accumulation and wealth and assets creation; organize African-Guyanese entrepreneurs, construction, trades and service providers in cooperative networks; rebuild and strengthen African-Guyanese businesses and producer organizations;  reduce poverty; and ensure a sustainable socio-economic future for the African-Guyanese collective.

INCREASE ACCESS TO TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Create sustainable jobs and employment opportunities for African-Guyanese; enhance employability through access to education and training institutions; enhance appropriate skill levels through skills training and life-long learning; increase access to tertiary and professional education and training and expand access to high-paying professional and technology-based occupations; reduce poverty; and inculcate appropriate workplace attitudes and behaviours towards producing a skilled and productive African-Guyanese workforce

RESTORE EXCELLENCE AND HIGH PERFORMANCE IN EDUCATION

Re-build the capacity of the African-Guyanese collective for learning and self-improvement through education and training; promote the fashioning of an education system and curricula that include and recognize the history and culture of Africa and African-Guyanese; institute policies, programmes and actions that contribute to a rounded socio-cultural and science-based education for the youth including instilling appropriate attitudes, behaviours, and values; and build a cadre of African-Guyanese educators, trainers, and technical level instructors, for sustainable inter-generational learning and advancement of the African-Guyanese collective;

ENSURE EQUITY, JUSTICE AND THE RESPECT OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Reduce systemic and structural inequalities in access to socio-economic opportunities and goods and services;  address and remove inequities and inequalities in access to justice and treatment by the courts, law enforcement, and prison officials; restore conditions of equity and equality in relations between African-Guyanese and other ethnic groups; combat racial profiling and negative stereotyping of African-Guyanese; promote equity and equality in the expression of religion in public meetings and spaces; and restore hope and confidence in the African-Guyanese collective, and youth in particular, through the realization of equity, justice and development;

DEMAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, APOLOGY AND REPARATIONS FOR ENSLAVEMENT AND THE SUFFERING CAUSED BY POLICIES, PROGRAMS AND LAWS INTENDED TO OPPRESS AND MARGINALIZE PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT IN GUYANA

Support demands by the African-Guyanese collective, the Caribbean and Latin American Diaspora, and the independent nations of Africa, for an apology and reparations for the injustices and deprivations of African trans-Atlantic slavery; advocate for the full embracing by the former colonial powers and others complicit in African enslavement of the UN Decade for People of African Descent and the calls for justice, recognition, and development; promote  a similar embracing and admission by other ethnic groups in contemporary Guyana who may have benefited from, or been complicit in, the subjugation, oppression, exploitation, and dispossession of African-Guyanese historically and into the contemporary period; and support healing from the cross-generational impacts of centuries of oppression and psychological deformation, and recovery of the spirit, ethos, and creativity of the African-Descendant collective.

PRESERVE AFRICAN GUYANESE HISTORY AND CULTURE AND BUILD A STRONG NETWORK OF AFRICAN GUYANESE ORGANIZATIONS

Promote capacity building in Afro-centric umbrella organizations; strengthen the capacity of the IDPADA-G Secretariat to provide capacity building and organizational support to such Afro-centric umbrella organizations; provide an institutional framework and operational capacity to coordinate and support the programmes of such organizations in pursuance of the goals for justice, recognition and development; promote the maintenance, preservation, and observance of African and African-Guyanese culture, languages, art, music, dance, dress and other forms of expression and the teaching of African history.