E/CN.4/2003/21 page 22 (b) Designing special projects, in collaboration with people of African descent, to support their initiatives at the community level and to facilitate the exchange of information and technical know-how between these populations and experts in the relevant areas; 31. The Working Group encourages Governments and international development and financial institutions to establish programmes to support specialists and students of African descent to undertake multidisciplinary research, inter alia, on places of memory of the slave trade and historiography. 32. The Working Group recommends that concerned Governments adopt measures to support the community initiatives of people of African descent in areas such as economic development, socio-political development, access to justice, release and rehabilitation of prisoners, special educational programmes (from early childhood through postgraduate), community legal systems, mental and physical health, training and skills development, and spiritual and artistic development. 33. The major treaty-monitoring bodies should pay particular attention to the situation of people of African descent and request Governments to provide specific information relating to this group in their periodic reports. The Working Group intends to strengthen its relationship with these bodies and other human rights mechanisms. 34. The Working Group recognizes that gender as well as racial discrimination faced by women and girls of African descent can be manifest by illiteracy, unemployment, lack of access to land, lack of drinking water and sanitation, and violence. The Working Group encourages Afro-descendant women’s groups to take part in the Working Group process and intends to ensure that a gender analysis of the issues of racial discrimination facing people of African descent is systematically maintained in its work. (c) Developing programmes intended for people of African descent that allocate additional investments in health systems, education, housing, electricity, drinking water and environmental control measures and that promote equal opportunities in employment, as well as other affirmative or positive action initiatives, within the human rights framework 35. The Working Group expresses its deep concern about the extremely limited access of people of African descent in many regions of the world to the new information and communication technologies, as this represents the further political, social and economic marginalization of this group. It urges Governments to pay particular attention to this exclusion in the development of policies and programmes to improve their situation. An appeal should be made to the preparatory process of the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society to pay particular attention to the situation faced by people of African descent.