A/HRC/36/60 in the world which, without change, threatened to disrupt societies. Those most affected by the exclusion and segregation produced by that situation were young people. As identified in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, colonialism, its effects and the persistence of related structures and practices were among the factors contributing to lasting social and economic inequalities in many parts of the world, and it was imperative to remove all obstacles by establishing a new economic order based on the principle of nondiscrimination. 20. Sara Sekkenes, of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), noted that human rights values such as equality and non-discrimination were at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Millennium Development Goals had focused mainly on a limited set of economic and social rights, and the Sustainable Development Goals, which had inequality at their centre and promised to leave no one behind, included a commitment to fight discrimination and encompassed civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Ms. Sekkenes highlighted the work of UNDP based on its vision to assist States to achieve the simultaneous eradication of poverty and a significant reduction in inequalities and exclusion, with a focus on developing sustainable development pathways, strengthening inclusive and effective democratic governance and peacebuilding, and building resilience. She provided detailed examples of the Programme’s work in supporting the promotion and protection of the human rights of people of African descent at the country level in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as other initiatives in the Latin American region. 21. Gay MacDougall, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, spoke on Sustainable Development Goal 1 and on Goal 10 on reducing inequality within and among countries. She highlighted the importance of the Committee’s general recommendation No. 34 (2011) on racial discrimination against people of African descent, in which the Committee recognized that racism and structural discrimination against people of African descent, rooted in the infamous regime of slavery, were evident in the situations of inequality affecting them. The Committee had called for robust special measures and affirmative action programmes to be instituted, and urged that States adopt comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and strong enforcement institutions with procedures that could be initiated by victims and their representatives. One of the key challenges in realizing the 2030 Agenda goal of leaving no one behind was with respect to indicators and data disaggregation, as only such data would give critical insight into the degree to which minorities, and specifically communities of people of African descent, were benefiting or being ignored. She further emphasized the need for a detailed mapping of people of African descent and corresponding socioeconomic data. The Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators had not made it an explicit requirement to apply disaggregation across the entire indicator set, thereby posing a challenge in acquiring a real picture in relation to the status of poverty, socioeconomic condition and inequalities faced specifically by people of African descent. 22. The last speaker, Fabiana Del Popolo of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), recalled that there was a large and diverse population of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, with its own demographic, territorial and sociopolitical perspectives but united by the common denominator of discrimination and structural racism owing to the legacy of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans by the European conquerors. She pointed to the importance of data collection initiatives in the region as a fundamental tool for the design and evaluation of policies for the promotion of the human rights of people of African descent. Twelve out of 13 countries had included data related to people of African descent in their censuses carried out since 2010, and 17 out of 20 Latin American countries intended to include identification of people of African in future censuses. Statistics on the economic condition of people of African descent were available in four countries in the region; in 2014, the number of people of African descent living in poverty as compared with people not of African descent was almost three times higher in Uruguay, more than double in Brazil and around 50 per cent higher in Ecuador and Peru. Despite advances in the region in terms of data collection, it was necessary to further disaggregate indicators and data in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. She concluded by stating that ECLAC would continue to support the countries of the region in those matters, through technical assistance, the 6