Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The Balanta Mandate and the UN's Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD)
Efia Nwangaza
29 Mar 2023
🖨️ Print Article
The Balanta Mandate and the UN's Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD)

The UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent must uphold the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). A recently written mandate affirms the importance of DDPA and the need to protect and strengthen it. 

"Ever since the Europeans snatched the first African off the African continent, Africans have used every available mechanism, and then some, to get free and back home--- literally and/or figuratively."

Chokwe Lumumba, Esquire, RNA Vice President, Mayor of Jackson MS

From making a home with or joining the fight against indigenous peoples, standing neutral and forming palenques, maroon colonies in swamps and jungles, fighting one set of whites on the side of another, repatriating to Africa or attempting to integrate into an illusory "reconstructed, democratic U.S.," creating and governing all Black post-holocaust of enslavement/maafa settlements,  towns, and districts, to filing, exercising, or reframing from exercising rights or filing this or that paper, WE, Afrikan people, have never given up the fight to be free, self-determining, and hold our place in the global struggle for justice and human dignity. 

From the Pan African Congresses and the League of Nations, W.E.B. Dubois and the NAACP at the door of the UN's first Secretary General, the 1951, 1996-97 Petitions, "We Charge Genocide . . . For Relief From the U.S. Government's Crimes Against the Negro/Black People," the World Conferences Against Racism dismissed by the colonizer/enslaver's minion, Colin Powell, and now the West's most recent boondoggle... the Permanent Forum ON People of African Descent (PFPAD), briefly distracted, we have tested and exposed their "authenticity," usefulness, and moved on.  Paraphrasing Queen Mother Audre Lorde, we may not be able to dismantle the enslaver's house with his/her tools, but we can momentarily rearrange it.

And so it is with the recent effort of Comrade Siphewe Baleka, President of the Balanta B'urassa History & Genealogy Society (BBHAGSIA).  He is standing in the shadow of the most brilliant and militant of our recent ancestors who "struck a blow for freedom," Malcolm X, Imari and Gaidi Obadele, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Robert and Mabel Williams, and many more whose names are unknown but have kept the fire burning and the struggle alive.



The Permanent Forum (PFPAD) was created in August 2021 by the UN General Assembly purportedly, as a "consultative" body "FOR people of African descent AND other relevant stakeholders as a platform for improving the safety and quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent." Its 1st Session, in Geneva, December 5th, introduced its representatives and confirmed suspensions. It is a continuing effort to displace the DDPA by taking advantage of youthful ambition and lack of historical contact. (See report published in January, 2023.)

Baleka invites us to study and sign the mandate he's drafted and circulated, after community consultation.  With sound historic and legal basis, it demands that the UN's Permanent Forum ON People of African Descent (PFPAD) simply use its much-vaunted status to unite and serve people of African Descent by requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the prisoner of war status of persons/peoples of African Descent under the Geneva Convention.  Furthermore, that the PFPAD not be used to discount, undermine, and bury the most revolutionary modern freedom document since those of the 1954 Bandung Conference and formation of the Non-Aligned Nations Movement- - - The 2001 World Conference Against Racism's Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA).  See "Durban 400" documentary on global consensus building---self-respect, self-defense, self-determination.



The DDPA is a global consensus blueprint against white supremacy and patriarchy, manifestation of self-determination, and a declaration of independence. The Balanta Mandate affirms the power of the people as represented by the DDPA and advances steps already taken in anticipation of future challenges, plans to end this 500+ year old war, reap just remediation and full satisfaction for ourselves and our posterity, and assure planet safety for humanity and all therein.

To THIS End, sign the Mandate, protect and promote the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, register and attend the 2nd Session of the UN Permanent Forum ON People of African Descent.  It will be held at UN Headquarters, New York, May 30 to June 2, 2023. JOIN: UNARC.org for information.

Contact: Efia Nwangaza, Esq, mxcentergvl@gmail.com

BLACK POWER IS IN OUR HANDS, Let's use it!!!



Efia Nwangaza is a South Carolina based attorney. She is Director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination and Founder and Coordinator of WMXP-LP Radio. She is also a member of the Black Belt Human Rights Coalition, Black Alliance for Peace, a veteran of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and a proud daughter of Garveyites. 

Durban Declaration and Programme of Action
UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
Balanta Mandate

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #44
US Out of Africa Network
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #44
25 January 2023
The Black Alliance for Peace AFRICOM Watch Bulletin discusses the first session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descen

More Stories


  • How the Black Movement Teaches Us to Fight Cold Wars Both Old and New
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    How the Black Movement Teaches Us to Fight Cold Wars Both Old and New
    18 Nov 2020
    China is rising not merely out of colonial underdevelopment but into a position of global leadership.
  • Donkey Dung 2/4 Dance
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Donkey Dung 2/4 Dance
    18 Nov 2020
    Militarist Macarena all pomp and circumstance— they’re baaaack with Donkey Dung 2/4 Dance… First you cry, “Wolf!” in tune with corporate law
  • V.I. Lenin and W.E.B. Du Bois: Class Struggle and Civilization
    Anthony Monteiro, BAR editor and columnist
    V.I. Lenin and W.E.B. Du Bois: Class Struggle and Civilization
    18 Nov 2020
    While the ruling elite is calling for a capitalist reset which could leave half the working class without jobs or adequate income, many leftists are proclaiming working class backwardness.
  • Births of a Nation, Redux: Surveying Trumpland with Cedric Robinson
    Robin D.G. Kelley
    Births of a Nation, Redux: Surveying Trumpland with Cedric Robinson
    18 Nov 2020
    What Robinson identified as “the rewhitening of America” a century ago is what we’re seeing play out today.
  • Global Africa’s Mission: Out-Think and Out-Maneuver Stupid, Violent Imperialists
    Mark P. Fancher
    Global Africa’s Mission: Out-Think and Out-Maneuver Stupid, Violent Imperialists
    18 Nov 2020
    AFRICOM is designed to do only one thing well, and that is to kill Africans.  “Global Africa must find a way to eliminate the AFRICOM threat.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us