A/HRC/24/52 and which had denied them the basic notions of natural rights (the right to life, liberty and property). He introduced the University College of London’s Legacies of British Slaveownership database and the recently created Voyages database to highlight the character of the trade and by extension to facilitate a much broader understanding of the experiences of enslaved Africans. He also presented statistical data on the magnitude of the transatlantic slave trade, the mortality rates of the enslaved and the atrocities committed against the enslaved by their enslavers, as well as the resistance against such enslavement. 14. During the interactive discussion, Ms. Najcevska thanked the presenter and suggested that the study of the contents of the database should be included in all school curricula to raise awareness and visibility about the research conducted. Similarly, Ms. Fanon Mendes-France enquired about the linkages between different databases. She further enquired whether the developers of the database were in contact with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Slave Route Project, which Mr. Reid confirmed was the case. Following the presentation, Ms. Fanon Mendes-France also recommended the creation of an international financial fund for historians and researchers on the topic. 15. Susana Baca, the former Minister of Culture of Peru and a singer and two-time Grammy-award winner, delivered a presentation on the promotion of cultural rights of people of African descent. She described the situation of people of African descent in her country, stating that, despite rich cultural diversity, racism and discrimination were still prevalent. She established the relationship between access to education, self-consciousness of peoples’ own dignity and their ability to gain political capacity to negotiate. She stated that the poor remained deprived of their rights and emphasized that development indicators needed to be disaggregated by geographical areas, economic levels and ethnic origin, so as to identify and protect the rights of excluded and marginalized groups. Owing to the prevalence of historical discrimination leading to feelings of inferiority among people of African descent, self-esteem through the enjoyment of cultural rights was crucial. Ms. Baca pointed out that it was only in 2012 that Peru had for the first time introduced into its education curriculum the study on the transatlantic slave trade. 16. Ms. Shepherd presented a paper on “Monuments, Memorialization and Black Identity”. She pointed out that tangible sites of memory were not only erected to honour heroes, but were regarded as part of a people’s cultural expression and an essential reflection of people’s cultural rights. They represented the other side of intangible heritage. She also stated that, despite the ubiquitousness of monuments and declared sites of memory, there was no consensus surrounding their purpose, audience or constituency; nor could anyone predict the public response to them. She gave examples from the Caribbean experience showing that Caribbean people had sought to eradicate and dismantle political structures of imperialism and historical representations of the Caribbean in text and image that mostly reflected British colonial subjectivity and authority. In the process, they had sought to reclaim and reconstruct the indigenous, African, Creole and immigrant experiences. 17. According to Ms. Shepherd, the erection of monuments to the leaders of the antislavery struggle and black liberation movements had been an essential post-colonial activity. Indeed, all over the African diaspora, the descendants of black freedom fighters had devised creative ways of re-voicing collectively the black experience and finding appropriate ways to honour the memory of the African freedom fighters. Ms. Shepherd stated in her presentation that a continued focus on leaders among the icons memorialized had led to increasing criticism of the project of iconographic and symbolic decolonization and a call for its completion through the construction of sites of memory to the masses, so that the sites of memory could voice the black experience more collectively and include women icons, among others. 5