SCIENTIFIC COLONIALISM: EXAMINING THE MANDATE FROM THE AFRO DESCENDANT PEOPLE ISSUED TO THE PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO REQUEST AN ADVISORY OPINION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THEIR STATUS AS PRISONERS OF WAR UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION
As stated in the Analysis by the Republic of New Afrika of Legal Issues Requiring an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice submitted to the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and the African Union Commission,
“It has been 298 days since [Forum] President Barr stated she would sign the Request and 274 days since she announced that analyzing the request “jointly” would be an agenda item at the just concluded 3rd session of the Forum. But there still has been no joint analysis of the legal considerations. Perhaps this is why Fourm Secretary Niraj Dawadi, immediately following the closing session, felt it necessary to approach me to tell me that the Forum believes requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ is very important but that due to shortage of resources and time, the members have not had proper opportunity to discuss it yet have concluded that because of its importance, the Request must have broad support. More interesting, however, was the admission that the Forum is concerned that if they exercise their mandate as I have suggested, and the Forum goes directly to the ICJ, that it will, according to Mr. Dawadi, “open the flood gates to petitions.” The concern is that this would set a precedent and every group will then expect the forum to act on their petition. It should be noted this was the very issue that both the League of Nations and the United Nations faced at their establishment - the question of receiving petitions from non-state actors. It was also the contentious subject at the Expert Side Session on Reparatory Justice held on April 17, 2024 in Geneva - whether or not Afro Descendant who are ‘stateless’ will be accorded the same status within the UN as states and how.”
THE ISSUE IS THE QUESTION OF OUR PETITIONS BEING RECEIVED AND CONSIDERED
In 1917, Cyrl V. Briggs petitioned to establish self-governing New African colonies, calling for “Colored Autonomous States”. This seemed to be the appropriate application of President Woodrow Wilson's calls for self determination under his “14 Points”. By the time of the Paris Peace Conference and in its aftermath in 1919, the League of Nations decided to use Scientific Colonialism as the foundation of its Mandates System.
It is of supreme importance to understand the concept of “scientific colonialism” and the history of petitioning in the League of Nations and the United Nations in order to understand the role of the recently established PFPAD, and in particularly, the issue provoked by the MANDATE FROM THE AFRO DESCENDANT PEOPLE ISSUED TO THE PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO REQUEST AN ADVISORY OPINION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THEIR STATUS AS PRISONERS OF WAR UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION at the first session of the Forum. The history is expertly provided by Ananda V. Burra in her work, Petitioning the Mandates: Anti-colonial and Anti-racist Publics in International Law. Burra writes,
“This dissertation is the first systematic legal-historical study of how transnational anticolonial and antiracist solidarity movements shaped the international law of non-state activism in the Mandates System of the League of Nations. In particular, this dissertation examines how anticolonial activists, colonial officials, and members of the newly-formed international bureaucracy in the League negotiated a language of grassroots international protest, one based around the practice of individuals and social movements petitioning international organizations about colonial abuse. African American activists were particularly active in this field, framing their involvement in the Mandates as a protest against racial discrimination, turning a mirror on the United States’ own racial politics while embodying a new stateless subjectivity. Petitioning in the interwar and immediate post-war years shows us how intercontinental forms of protest could be deployed in fighting what states saw as primarily local battles. These battles spanned the period from 1920 until at least 1956, when the International Court of Justice engaged with the history and jurisprudence of the right to petition in international law. This dissertation traces the origins of petitioning in the Mandates System to grassroots activism in 1918 and 1919, far earlier than other works on the League have suggested. . . . What was it about the Mandates System that, despite its marginal position in international colonialism, made it a key battleground for determining the role colonized peoples would play in the UN? How did Pan-African petitioning in the League shape the possibilities for individuals to participate in the UN after the Second World War? How did these battles become a focus for post-Second World War and Cold war debates over international rights and political participation? . . .
[T]he Mandates System started its life as a legal and political anomaly. It had been created to address one of the most serious post-First World War territorial question: what to do with German and Ottoman colonies after the war. These territories - in the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific - had been captured during the war, and several different states had advanced claims to occupy them its end. Ottoman territories in the Middle East - Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq - had been captured by the British and the French, with help from local Arab allies and troops from India (in the case of the British) and sub-Saharan Africa (in the case of the French). French troops had captured parts of what was then German West-Africa in Togo and Cameroon, and British troops from the Gold Coast and Nigeria had effectively disarmed German defenses in the area. British and Belgian troops in East Africa defeated German forces in Rwanda-Urundi.
The white British Dominions of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand had asserted their newly strengthened sovereign status within the British Empire through their participation in the war. South Africa, under the Boer generals Botha and Smuts, had overcome local white sympathy for Germans in South-West Africa and defeated German troops with the aim of incorporating the territory into South Africa. Australia and New Zealand did the same for most German possessions in South-East Asia and the South Pacific, as did Japan for German islands north of the equator. The Dominions were eager to have colonies of their own as proof of their emerging semi-sovereignty in the new century. In terms of the civilizational logic of early twentieth century, when a state aquired colonies (with the concomitant responsibility to impart civilization to them), this signaled its arrival into the community of nations. In South Africa, in particular, the messianic vision of Cecil Rhodes - to bring black Africa under white power and towards salvation - expressed itself in the campaign to take control of South-West Africa. Thus, for many states on the winning side of the war, this symbolic aspect of acquiring new colonies made the disposition of captured territories all the more important.
Yet the optics of fighting a world war to increase colonial holdings were not good, especially in the United States. Outright annexation of enemy territories arguably violated President Woodrow Wilson’s promises in his “Fourteen Points'' speech of 1918. For the British, the main architects of the League of Nations’ Covenant, asserting British superiority in the field of colonial governance over both the German and the French militated against allowing other states to annex territories outright. . . . As Manela argues, Wilson’s persona became a talisman that several anticolonial activists latched on to as a ‘herald of a new era in international affairs.’ This was even though Wilson never imagined that his call for universal self determination would apply in the colonial world. More than anything else, Wilson’s rhetoric was borne of his wish to outflank any more radical views on international reorganization and governance. Wilson may have provided the political justification restraining colonial empires from annexing the German and Ottoman colonies, but it was British lawyers and diplomats who took the lead in shaping the post-1918 international legal order. The intellectual roots of the Mandates can be traced back to the late nineteenth century and the rise of ‘developmentalism’ as a core tenet of liberal imperial planning in Britain. Colonial states were beginning to deploy new ways of intervening in the everyday lives of their colonial populations at this moment.
With the rise of social science research and the production of statistical analysis, states were much more capable of monitoring their domestic and colonial populations on a large number of metrics. As Timothy Mitchell has observed, ‘as Britain and other colonial powers faced a harder task in justifying the continuation of colonial occupation, new statistical work could clarify the purpose and authority of imperial government.’ Academics like Alfred Zimmern and colonial diplomats like Lord Milner theorized the British Empire as a family of states and state-like entities, some more mature than others, some possessing more international legal autonomy than others. Zimmern, one of the drafters of the League of Nations Covenant, described the British Commonwealth as a ‘procession’: ‘It consist[ed] of a large variety of communities at a number of different stages in their advance towards complete self government.’ Scientific colonialism supplied a logic of development, suggesting the possibility that territories could move from one category to another. The challenge as these thinkers saw it, particularly in Africa, was to promote a form of colonial rule that would both uplift the natives and provide for international free trade. British colonies and protectorates in India and Africa were taken as models, and Milner’s disciples had already suggested that such governance systems be exported to other colonial areas. . . .”
Additionally, Antony Anghie writes in Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law:
“In the Mandate System, however, the problem of sovereignty took a very different character. In the final analysis, the League was subordinate to the will of sovereign states. In the mandates, this relationship was radically altered. Here, international institutions, rather than being the product of sovereign states, were given the task of creating sovereignty out of the backward peoples and territories brought under the mandate regime. The emergence of international human rights law during the UN period is axiomatically characterized in virtually all the literature on the subject as a revolutionary and unprecedented moment in the history of international law because it undermined the fundamental principle of territorial sovereignty, which had been in existence since the emergence of the modern European nation-state and the writings of Vattel. It was only because of the emergence of the UN system of international human rights law that international law and institutions can regulate relations between a sovereign and its citizens. It is in this context that the truly extraordinary character of the Mandate System project, when put at its highest, becomes more apparent. It did not seek merely to qualify the rights of the sovereign, but rather to create the sovereign . . . . Nevertheless, the interior of the state remained outside the control or even scrutiny of international law, which could address state behaviour only when it emerged into the conscious sphere, as it were, when it manifested itself in the external actions of the state and thereby became a properly international issue. The frustration for inter-war jurists was that, while they could vaguely conceptualize the interior in various ways, they were unable to act upon it.
The discovery of interiority is central to the phenomenon of modernity as a whole. The great literature of modernity -- the works of Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf -- are preoccupied with mapping the interior, with tracing and examining the workings of an inner consciousness. International jurists sensed that access to the interior of the state would revolutionize their discipline in much the same way that Joyce had revolutionized the novel and Freud had revolutionized our understanding of human nature. And yet, this inquiry was precluded by sovereignty doctrine. We might understand the monumental significance of international human rights law in these terms: it enabled international law and institutions to enter the interior, to address the unconscious, and thereby to administer ‘civilizing therapy’ to the body politic of the sovereign state.
Whereas previously the internal character of the sovereign European state was immune from scrutiny, in the inter-war period it was precisely through the Mandate System that international law and institutions had complete access to the interior of a society. It was in the operations of the Mandate System, then, that it became possible for international law not merely to enter the interior realm, but also to create the social and political infrastructure necessary to support a functioning sovereign state. Here, then, sovereignty was to be studied not in the context of the problem of war and of collective security, but in a very different constellation of relationships that are central to the understanding of sovereignty in the non-European world.
It was in the Mandate System that international law and institutions could conduct experiments and develop technologies that were hardly possible in the sovereign Western world. It was in the Mandate System, furthermore, that many of the interests of jurists such as Pound, Alvarez and Hudson could find expression. This was because the task confronting the Mandate System involved far more than the granting of a simple juridical status. Rather, international law and institutions were required to create the economic, political and social conditions under which a sovereign state could come into being. In this sense, law had to be combined with sociology, political science and economics in order to achieve the goals of the Mandate System. [ Note: and hence the necessity of collecting statements/reports from all fields directly from the dependent people themselves to enter into the interiority of their consciousness]. It was through international institutions that such a task of synthesis could be addressed. . . . AT THE LOCAL LEVEL, THE DUTY, AS LUGARD CHARACTERIZED IT, TO DEVELOP MANDATE TERRITORIES REQUIRED LARGE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS. THE COMPELLING NEED FOR ‘ARTERIAL RAILWAYS, WITH HARBOURS AND TELEGRAPHS, THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND HOUSES FOR STAFF’, IN LUGARD’S WORDS, ‘JUSTIFIED ANY SACRIFICE THESE PUBLIC WORKS FURTHER ASSISTED IN ELIMINATING THE SLAVE TRADE AND INTER-TRIBAL WARFARE; AT THE SAME TIME, THEY ALSO EXPANDED MARKETS. THIS FOCUS ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND EFFICIENCY HAD A RADICAL EFFECT ON COLONIAL POLICIES IN GENERAL; MORE PARTICULARLY, IT LED COLONIAL POWERS TO VIEW NATIVES IN TERMS OF THE LABOUR AND ECONOMIC WEALTH THEY REPRESENTED. SIMPLY PUT, THE NATIVE WAS NO LONGER MERELY TO BE CONQUERED AND DISPOSSESSED; RATHER, HE WAS TO BE MADE MORE PRODUCTIVE. . . .‘WELFARE’ THUS MEANT, FOR EXAMPLE, REQUIRING THAT WORK TOOK PLACE IN HYGIENIC CONDITIONS AND THAT THE PMC AND THE ILO SHOULD COLLABORATE IN ENSURING THIS. IN THIS WAY, THE NEW FORM OF COLONIALISM, BASED ON PRESERVING AND DEVELOPING THE NATIVE AND HER TERRITORIES AS PRODUCTIVE ASSETS RATHER THAN EXPLOITING AND EXHAUSTING THESE ASSETS, PRESENTED ITSELF AS AN EXEMPLIFICATION OF HUMANIST AND LIBERAL PRINCIPLES.”
Hence, the petitioning system was designed to be the mechanism for accessing the interior of the colonial subjects for the purpose of making them more productive and “civilized” in the colonial system!
All the statements sent to PFPAD are the latest inputs into the scientific colonial project at this stage.
During the early period, however, both Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois separately and simultaneously attempted to bring the New Afrikan and Afro Descendant claims to the Paris Peace Conference and make a claim for the former German colonies to be given as a New Afrikan/Afro Descendant Independent Nation. On November 10, 1918 Marcus Garvey, who was prevented from attending the Paris Peace Conference, nevertheless submitted the Resolution of the UNIA Peace Aims, which, among other things, stated,
“Be It Resolved, That we, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League of the World, representing the interests of the New Spirited Negroes of America, Africa and the West Indies, assembled in Universal Mass
Convention in the Palace Casino, New York, on Sunday November 10, 1918, hereby beg to submit the following peace aims to the Allied Democracies of Europe and America, and to the people of democratic tendencies of the world.
And Be It Further Resolved, That we believe that it will only be through a proper recognition of the Negro’s rights and the rights of all weaker peoples at the Peace Conference that future wars will be obviated.
And We Further Pray That the Peace Conference to assemble will take cognizance of these our aims
That the principle of self-determination be applied to Africa and all European controlled colonies in which people of African descent predominate.
That all economic barriers that hamper the industrial development of Africa be removed.
That Negroes enjoy the right to travel and reside in any part of the world even as Europeans now enjoy these rights.
That Negroes be permitted the same educational facilities now given to Europeans
That Europeans who interfere with, or violate African tribal customs be deported and denied re-entry to the continent.
That the segregatory and proscriptive ordinances against Negroes in any part of the world be repealed and that they (Negroes) be given complete political, industrial and social equality in countries where Negroes and people of any other race live side by side.
That the reservation land acts aimed against the natives of South Africa be revoked and the land restored to its prescriptive owners.
That Negroes be given proportional representation in any scheme of world government.
That the captured German colonies in Africa be turned over to the natives with educated Western and Eastern Negroes as their leaders.” [emphasis added].
Similarly, on November 17, 1918, W.E.B. DuBois, who was allowed to attend the Paris Peace Conference and was received, submitted the Memoranda on the Future of Africa, that stated,
“The barter of colonies without regard to the wishes or welfare of the inhabitants or the welfare of the world in general is a custom which this war should put to an end, since it is a fruitful cause of dissension among nations, a danger to the status of civilized labor, a temptation to unbridled exploitation, and an excuse for unspeakable atrocities committed against natives. . . If the world after the war decided to reconstruct Africa in accordance with the wishes of the Negro race and the best interests of civilization, the process might be carried out as follows: the former German colonies with one million square miles and twelve and one-half millions of inhabitants could be internationalized. To this could be added by negotiation the 800,000 square miles and nine million inhabitants of Portuguese Africa. It is not impossible that Belgium could be persuaded to add to such a state the 900,000 square miles and nine million natives of the Congo, making an International Africa with over two and one-half million square miles of land and over twenty million people. This reorganized Africa could be under the guidance of organized civilization. The Governing International Commission should represent not simply governments but modern culture - science, commerce, social reform, and religious philanthropy . . . We can, if we will, inaugurate on the Dark Continent a last great crusade for humanity. With Africa redeemed, Asia would be safe and Europe indeed triumphant.”
And here then, is the origin of three phenomenon:
1) the deployment of scientific colonialism and the use of colonial subjects themselves to provide access to the interior of the colonial subjects and the information needed for development under colonialism; and
2) the continued privileged status of states and the secondary status of Afro Descendant people under alien domination in the international system; and
3) the discrimination against some non-state actors deemed unacceptable to the colonial powers.
With regard to the latter, for example, Marcus Garvey and the UNIA, who wanted African sovereignty for the former German colonies, were not received by the colonial powers in Paris while DuBois and the NAACP, considered to be more “respectable”, less black and desiring an “international mandate” for control of the former German Colonies, were received. And this is precisely what is taking place in PFPAD.
Thus, PFPAD can be viewed as the most recent development to further scientific colonialism. Rather than have states provide reports, for example, as mandated on the Periodic Review system of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Forum has become the premier place for Afro Descendant non-state actors to do the work of scientific colonialism by providing it the information and data it needs to simultaneously engage in development work while maintaining the status quo of neo-colonial domination and the process of “civilizing” the natives under alien domination. Moreover, we see within PFPAD that Afro Descendants from the territories still under alien domination, will not be afforded the same status, influence and support as the Afro Descendants represented by state delegations. This was made obvious during the third session of the Forum when, on the opening day, I received an overwhelming standing ovation after my presentation highlighting PFPAD’s inaction on the
MANDATE FROM THE AFRO DESCENDANT PEOPLE ISSUED TO THE PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO REQUEST AN ADVISORY OPINION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THEIR STATUS AS PRISONERS OF WAR UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION.
Though the Mandate for the Request was submitted with 248 signatures and received the overwhelming support from the floor at the Forum’s third session, the new PFPAD President Dr. June Soomer, who served as Chair of St. Lucia’s Reparations Commission, told TAG24 NEWS that she will not take independent action on the petition request and that the matter must first be discussed among all of the forum members, she said, and a decision will not be reached until all legal considerations are taken into account.
The day after my standing ovation, David Commissiong, Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM, gave a presentation on Panel #1: Reparations, Sustainable Development & Economic Justice. This is the same panel that I requested to be on as far back as January 24. David Commissiong was allowed on the panel to represent the privileged class and state interests in CARICOM while I, as Minister of Foreign Affairs of a non-recognized provisional government and representative of the people who had mobilized its civil society on this issue, was refused a space on the panel and relegated to addressing the Forum from the floor.
During his presentation, Ambassador Commissiong called for the full support of the proposal for the establishment of a new, Special International Tribunal on Reparations to adjudicate reparations claims and quantify reparations remedies. Ambassador Commissiong then proceeded to explain,
“We need such a Special International Tribunal on Reparations because at present, there is no international court properly equipped to deal with the reparations claim of the magnitude and complexity of our claim for our claim of reparations for hundreds of years of African enslavement. The closest that we have to such an institution is the International Court of Justice, but not only is the ICJ inadequate in terms of its design, it also suffers from the fact that many of the former enslaver nations have made reservations to the ICJ treaty, reservations that prohibit the ICJ from adjudicating crimes that they committed during the colonial era. The establishment of such a Special International Tribunal on Reparations will require a positive decision of the United Nations General Assembly. Let us resolve to portend the international advocacy work that will be required to successfully deliver the creation of this critical institution at the UN General Assembly.”
While the proposal for the Special International Tribunal on Reparations is a worthy proposal to be supported, let's look more closely on what happened. On the opening day, I successfully rallied the delegates at the PFPAD 3rd session to the idea, “Let’s end the 1st Decade of People of African Descent with a real accomplishment - initiating the case for reparations. It only takes the new Forum Chair June Soomer to sign the request and send it to the registrar of the ICJ. This can be done at the concluding session of this Forum if we the delegates demand it.”
This is an initiative led by the people and for the people requiring PFPAD to take action now under its mandate. Rather than support this, the Barbados Ambassador framed the issue as a choice between the Barbados proposal for the tribunal versus requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ. He then confuses the issue by raising issues that concern actual litigation at the ICJ and NOT having anything to do with the advisory opinion process. He then concludes with a cry to rally around the Barbados tribunal proposal, thereby creating doubt as to the proper course of action and diluting the consensus momentum achieved on the first day by civil society delegates representing the people.
Meanwhile, what the Barbados Ambassador didn’t say during the panel is that CARICOM, led by Barbados, recently decided that it was, indeed, going to file a Request for an Advisory Opinion from the ICJ!
So the Ambassador from Barbados attempted to discredit civil society’s effort to get access to the court while behind the scenes already planned to get such access in the name of the Reparations Movement!
And more than likely, when CARICOM makes its request for the ICJ opinion, it will be done in a way to further the agenda of CARICOM states rather than the agenda coming directly from the people themselves. It will be framed in such a way as to make it seem that CARICOM is leading the way in this arena while the people’s request will be ignored. This is a blatant example of what is called elite capture, in this case, by CARICOM states. One must wonder if this is part of the strategy to have Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley elected as the next UN General Secretary?
I ask, have we been duped once again by supporting the Forum which may only be an instrument of scientific colonialism?
By any means necessary,
Siphiwe Baleka
Minister of Foreign Affairs
January 24, 58 ADM* (2024)
Ms. Epsy Campbell Barr, President
Permanent Forum of People of African Descent (PFPAD)
RE: CMA-O-009-2023 - REPLY TO JULY 18 LETTER/PGRNA#8/1/24/58 REQUEST TO PRESENT ON A PANEL AT THE PFPAD 3RD SESSION
President Barr,
Once again, it was a pleasure to spend time with you during the Accra Reparations Conference and gain a better understanding of PFPAD’s development and position on the MANDATE FROM THE AFRO DESCENDANT PEOPLE ISSUED TO THE PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO REQUEST AN ADVISORY OPINION FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON THEIR STATUS AS PRISONERS OF WAR UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION.
As you know, at the Forum’s first session on December 6, 2022, as President of the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA), I invoked the mandate of UN Resolution 75/314 requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ, consistent with our interpretation of the Durban Declaration Programme of Action, UN Charter 96, and Article 65 of the ICJ Statute. The Forum has already concluded in its recommendations to “promote an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal question of reparatory justice” and your July 21 letter to me stated “I have requested the incorporation of this item in the agenda of the next meeting, to proceed to analyze it jointly. I also inform the High Commissioner of the United Nations of this, . . .” To assist in the joint analysis, on November 20, 2023 I launched an Input Form for lawyers and jurists in order to gather their opinions on the legal questions that have been submitted.
Therefore, as the father and leading figure of this initiative, and consistent with the IDPAD Coalition UK letter of support for the original PFPAD Request for an ICJ Advisory Opinion, I am requesting that I be included on any panel at the PFPAD 3rd session that will be discussing this agenda item.
Finally, I wish to inform you that on January 6, 58 ADM (2024), I was sworn in as the Interim Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) that was founded on March 31, 1968 at the National Black Government Conference hosted by the Malcolm X Society. The direct precursor to the PG-RNA was the Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU) established by Malcolm X on June 28, 1964 and granted observer status to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on July 17, 1964. I made mention of the Republic of New Afrika’s history in my July 18 letter to you, calling your attention to the NEW AFRIKAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Statement to the 20th session of the UN Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and The African American Case for Independence at the International Court of Justice and emphasizing that:
3. At the end of the US Civil War, the United States legislated voluntary, compensated repatriation and ceded territory for New Afrikan self-governing territories in pursuit of independence;
4. The assassination of President Lincoln led to a campaign of fraud and terror to deny New Afrikan’s right to return to their homeland, reduce the status of the recently established self-governing territories, and deny the full recognition of the New Afrikan’s political rights
5. Cyril Briggs, W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey advocated for New Afrikan self-government and independence, the latter two petitioning the League of Nations for justice and for self determination. The United States, however, refused to sign a special treaty agreeing to the international protection of its internal domestic colonies.
6. The United States failed its sacred trust obligation under the UN Charter Chapter XI Article 73 to promote New Afrikan well-being and to “develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions.” It further failed to declare New Afrikan territories as trust territories, under UN Charter, Chapter XII Article 77.1.c trusteeship system.
It is for this reason that PG-RNA, through the New Afrikan Diplomatic and Civil Service Corps (NADCSC), is conducting a Plebiscite campaign and takes special interest in the Request for an ICJ Advisory Opinion question:
(d) What rights do the Afro Descendants throughout the Americas and Caribbean have to exercise self-determination and conduct plebiscites to discern who wants to repatriate to their ancestral homeland, who wants to establish independent nation states of their own, and who wants to integrate into the states they currently reside?
Given the recent attention to South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, now is the time for the case against “slow genocide” and reparatory justice for the victims of the Dum Diversas War and subsequent chattel enslavement to be raised at the ICJ.
By any means necessary,
Siphiwe Baleka
Minister of Foreign Affairs
*Letters of support attached.