A/HRC/24/52 77. People of African descent and African organizations and communities should establish a network to facilitate trade and cultural exchange, and promote interaction and collaboration. 78. Schools should adopt programmes to promote empowerment and help children to develop a positive perception of themselves and reinforce self-assurance and pride in their African backgrounds by demonstrating knowledge about their culture, history and contributions to society. Such measures will also improve their performance in schools. 79. People of African descent should therefore be consulted in the construction of new monuments and the development of memorial sites. Gender balance and diversity should be taken into consideration in the construction of new monuments and memorial sites. 80. The development of the ninth volume of the General History of Africa by UNESCO, should also focus on the new aims for Africa and on the African diaspora and its challenges. D. Data collection 81. Another key enabling factor for ensuring the recognition of people of African descent and overcoming the historical “social invisibility” is through the collection, recording, monitoring and analysis of reliable information on their living conditions. Collecting, disaggregating and analysing data is an important step towards solving acute and long-lasting problems. It is also a demonstration of political will to monitor the human rights situation of groups facing discrimination. 1. Conclusions 82. The existence of this data and appropriate data-collection systems are important tools for formulating, monitoring and assessing public racial-equality policies at the national, regional and local levels. Policies could include national action plans against racism and appropriate affirmative action policies to counter persistent or structural disparities and de facto inequalities stemming from historical circumstances that denied people of African descent the advantages needed to realize their full potential. 83. Data is also extremely useful for national equality bodies and national human rights institutions in monitoring and investigating cases of racial discrimination, planning and orienting their work, and designing national awareness campaigns. 84. There is a need for States to reconcile their obligation to ensure protection of data and the right to privacy, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to remove bans in constitutions and laws in collecting the data. 85. Special data-processing methods are necessary for protecting people’s identity, in particular procedures that ensure anonymity and guarantee that data could not be traced back to individuals. There is a difference between personal data, which are subject to special protection, and processing impersonal statistical data, which is permitted for historical, statistical or scientific purposes. In that regard, efforts should be made to neutralize the risks inherent in identifying individuals and examine how the data could be dissociated from the identification of individuals. Relevant practice in the field of medicine could be an important guide. 18