A/HRC/54/71 partnership based on a spirit of solidarity and mutual respect in areas such as debt relief, poverty eradication, market access and the promotion of foreign direct investment. 49 52. The Working Group has concluded that inequalities are deeply entrenched in structural barriers that intersect and reinforce each other. Given their cross-cutting nature, the Sustainable Development Goals and targets thereof will not be achieved if these persistent structural barriers are not acknowledged. The Sustainable Development Goals and the International Decade for People of African Descent offer opportunities to advance the human rights of people of African descent. Structural racism, racial discrimination, Afrophobia, xenophobia and related intolerance are the root causes of such inequality and must be addressed.50 53. In this regard, the operational guidelines on the inclusion of people of African descent in the 2030 Agenda reference the reports of the Working Group and international human rights law regarding importance of a specific focus on people of African descent in the 2030 Agenda in order to leave no one behind and to reach the furthest behind first. The guidelines were field-tested during the Working Group’s visits to Ecuador and Peru in 2019 and 2020 and were validated on 20 November 2020 at an expert meeting that included representatives from the United Nations Population Fund and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The guidelines are aimed at achieving the recognition and inclusion of people of African descent as stakeholders in a human rights-based approach to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Interlinkages between recognition, justice and development 54. The interlinkages, interrelationship and interdependence among the three pillars of the International Decade for People of African Descent – recognition, justice and development – are inextricable. Systemic discrimination and the structural and institutional invisibility faced by people of African descent stem from non-recognition, namely the erasure of their history and contributions through a process of reframing, rewriting, falsification or denial. In this regard, the administration of justice offers an important means of eliciting the truth. Justice includes reparations encompassing the elements of cessation, assurance and guarantees of non-repetition, as well as restitution, compensation and satisfaction, yet faced with structural discrimination and invisibility, people of African descent face an uphill battle in claiming their rights. Draft United Nations declaration on the promotion, protection and full respect of the human rights of people of African descent 55. The General Assembly, in paragraph 11 of its resolution 76/226, invited the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent and the Working Group to contribute to the development of a draft United Nations Declaration on the promotion, protection and full respect of the human rights of people of African descent fairly recently, in 2021. However, the Working Group had been highlighting the necessity of adopting such a declaration and developing complementary standards since at least 2012.51 56. The Working Group dedicated its twenty-second session to the theme of a framework for a declaration on the promotion and full respect of human rights of people of African descent. 52 It noted that such a declaration would provide an opportunity to consider the impact of historical injustices and structural racism on people of African descent and to remedy the consequences. It would also provide an opportunity to elaborate rights that had not yet been enshrined in the international legal framework and that were specific to the experience of people of African descent. 57. The Working Group called for the draft declaration to establish or reaffirm standards relating to the individual and collective rights of people of African descent, including the right to reparations; to their recognition as ethnic communities and groups; to the communal 49 50 51 52 12 Durban Programme of Action, para. 158; and A/HRC/30/56, para. 43. A/HRC/36/60, paras. 51–88. A/HRC/21/60, para. 59. See A/HRC/39/69. GE.23-15301