A/HRC/14/18 subject to structural discrimination in health and education. Based on that assessment, she called for strategies that would differentiate between situations in which people of African descent were a minority and contexts where they constituted the majority of the population. 30. Dilip Lahiri, a member of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination invited as a panellist to the Working Group, presented an analysis of structural discrimination against people of African descent in respect of access to education. He reported that the Committee would engage in a thematic discussion on people of African descent at its seventy-seventh session in August 2010. Its views and recommendations would then feed into the draft programme of activities for the International Year in 2011. 31. Mr. Lahiri stated that structural discrimination against people of African descent, even in situations of apparent equality under the law, was well documented and had resulted in social exclusion and an inability to access opportunities in education, health, employment and access to justice. That had relegated communities of African descent to the margins of mainstream society. He called for effective action to redress the situation, such as concrete and measurable special measures. He also called on Governments to take ownership of the process with the cooperation of the international community. Mr. Lahiri noted that the scope of the mandate of the Working Group had varied in subsequent resolutions and suggested, in the light of limited resources, that the Working Group focus on Afro-descendents whose situation could be directly traced to the transatlantic slave trade. 32. Several observers praised the quality of Mr. Lahiri’s critical analysis. One observer called for the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the United Nations system and the global community to put pressure on the Human Rights Council to act on the recommendations of the Working Group, so as to speed up their implementation. 33. One observer stated that education was needed to reclaim and value African history and the continent’s role in world history. The issue was not only to educate people of African descent, but all people of the planet. 34. The question was raised by one observer as to how the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination approached and addressed the problem of structural discrimination in all its aspects. 35. Mr. Sicilianos pointed to the global mandate of the Working Group as per Human Rights Council resolution 9/14 adopted in 2008. He also indicated that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination typically formulated simultaneous and identical recommendations concerning people of African descent and indigenous peoples. Considering that the legal regimes applicable to the two groups differed, he advocated for distinguishing the two groups, without neglecting their comparable difficulties. 36. The UNICEF representative noted there were two distinct diasporas with common threads: one resulting from the transatlantic slave trade and one resulting from the emigration of Africans to Europe following colonization. She asked the panellist how he assessed the position of blacks in European countries. The panellist responded that the circumstances of Afro-descendants in Europe were different from Afro-descendants in the Americas, since the former had left Africa of their own free will. 37. Mr. Lahiri stressed the need for disaggregated data from States to allow the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to fulfil its responsibilities. He also reported that the Committee had recently adopted general comment No. 32 (2009) on the meaning and scope of special measures in the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which could be an area of synergy with the Working Group. 7