6. These trends also contribute to reinforce prejudices and stereotypes; such as an association of minorities to criminality or to poor educational performance or not being worthy of a home loan or micro-credit loans. 7. The situation of Afro-descendant women is particularly worrisome; not only because they represent half of the Afro-descendant population, but because they are a vulnerable sector of society on the grounds of their sex, race and poverty. 8. Women are also the most economically affected by racism and racial discrimination. Usually they have to drop out of school (if they have the luxury of going in the first place) in order to take care of parents, brothers or sisters. They are victims of all kind of violence, verbal, physical and sexual; and usually they have to engage in informal economic activities in order to survive; in most cases with little to no help from state institutions. Based on that I would like to make the following recommendations: 1. There has to be a public acknowledgment by governments to recognize how structural racism is the biggest obstacle to their democracies and development. Based on that recognition, governments will be able to begin overcoming and redressing the consequences of it. 2. Governments should invest in education as it is the main tool to combat racial discrimination; not only to offer education for all, but to re-educate their societies so as to acknowledge the contributions of minorities in the development of national identities. 3. Governments should implement or keep special measures and Affirmative Action Programs to ensure that minorities will have full access to economic opportunities; including loans. 4. Finally, we encourage the governments to fully implement the Durban Program of Action of 2001 (III World Conference against Racism that took place in South Africa).