E UNITED NATIONS Economic and Social Council Distr. GENERAL E/CN.4/2006/19 6 December 2005 ENGLISH Original: ENGLISH COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS Sixty-second session Item 6 (a) of the provisional agenda RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION: COMPREHENSIVE IMPLEM ENTATION OF AND FOLLOW-UP TO THE DURBAN DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its fifth session (Geneva, 29 August-2 September 2005)∗ Chairperson-Rapporteur: Mr. Peter Lesa Kasanda Summary At its fifth session, the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, examined the following themes: mainstreaming the situation of people of African descent in plans for achieving the Millennium Development Goals; the empowerment of women of African descent; the role of political parties in the integration of people of African descent into political life and decision- making processes. Overall, the experts shared the same view concerning: the difficulties in evaluating the extent of discrimination due to conceptual limitations and inadequacies in the collection of data; the necessity of developing and implementing positive measures aimed at accelerating the achievement of substantive equality of persons of African descent and especially that of women and girls of African descent; the creation of strong monitoring and evaluation mechanisms at the national level in order to assess progress made, the effectiveness of such measures and the identification of good practices. The Working Group adopted several recommendations on each theme. The Working Group also adopted a three-year programme of work and developed toward this end a set of modalities of action to further the implementation of the Working Group’s mandate. ∗ The annexes are circulated as received, in the language of submission only. GE.05-16548