Remarks of the Honorable Alcee L. Hastings Co-Chairman, United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe United Nations Minority Issues Forum: Second Session Session 8: Concrete Steps to Advance Minority Political Participation and to Build Capacity of Minorities to Participate Effectively November 13, 2009 Good afternoon. I am Congressman Alcee Hastings from the United States. I am honored to be here today with a number of my colleagues from the US Congress, including the Chair of this Forum Congresswoman Barbara Lee. I am pleased that this week’s event offers the opportunity for us to work together in the international arena on an issue of great importance - minority political participation. I am pleased that the Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay McDougall invited me to present on a minority political participation effort I recently initiated that I believe will be useful for today’s discussion in developing recommendations for this forum’s final document. As the Chair and co-Chair the US Helsinki Commission over the past few years, I have been tasked with the responsibility of monitoring and supporting 56 European and North American countries’ efforts to uphold the Helsinki Accords and related commitments, including fostering equal rights and combating intolerance and discrimination. A series of hearings we held in the US Congress on these issues including existing inequalities and discrimination faced by Black Europeans and other visible minorities throughout the OSCE, led to a call for action. Instrumental to those hearings were the testimonies of UN representatives Gay McDougall and Joe Frans that assisted in identifying patterns of concern in the OSCE region. Following those hearings, I introduced the first US bill calling for transatlantic government partnerships to combat racism and discrimination and partnered with UN Working Group of People of African descent head Joe Frans and current and former EU Parliamentarians Harlem Desir, Claude Moraes, and Glyn Ford to begin an initiative that would support the needed involvement of minorities in the policymaking arenas to effectively address these issues. I’m happy to see a number of my colleagues here today. The resulting event was the “Black European Summit: Transatlantic Dialogue on Political Participation.” The Summit took place over two days in April (15-16) at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. For the first time a small group of political and intellectual minority leaders from more than ten countries exchanged information on barriers to political participation and the roles of minority