UN panel urges Portugal to gather data on Afro-descendants to address discrimination

A group of United Nations independent experts today urged Portugal to gather detailed and reliable information on conditions for people of African descent in the country, saying the absence of such data made it difficult to recognize discrimination and its various manifestations.

“It is all about making the invisible visible,” said Mirjana Najcevska, the current chairperson of the four-member UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, at the end of a five-day fact-finding mission to Portugal.

The team assessed the challenges faced by people of African descent due to racial discrimination and current programmes and other activities with a view to confronting those problems in Portugal.

The expert panel took note of the authorities’ reluctance to collect data disaggregated by race to prevent abuse of such information. However, they strongly recommended that the Government collect such data with the necessary safeguards against misuse, including “anonymisation” and restricted access as provided for under the constitution.

The Working Group stressed that an effective set of policies to address discrimination against racial minorities should be based on an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the situation in which such groups live.

“Such understanding can only be fully achieved by reference to wide-ranging and reliable data broken down by race/ethnicity,” said Ms. Najcevska.

“Some stereotypes and attitudes towards the Afro-descendent community may stem from unrecognized racial discrimination,” she stressed. “We encourage Portugal to engage in a reflection upon how the country’s colonial history and slave trade may inform attitudes today regarding people of African descent,” she added.

She pointed out that “the existence of a large number of Afro-descendent communities in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods points towards the probable existence of structural discrimination, which should be analysed and addressed, among other things, with positive measures.”

The Working Group welcomed initiatives implemented by the Government to facilitate the integration of migrants, which also benefited people of African descent, including the work of the High Commissioner for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue, the National Centre for Immigrant Support, the Immigration Observatory and the National Agency for Qualification, among others.

The experts also praised the Government for its focus on integration of migrants through “interculturality,” a policy intended to enrich a culture by incorporating positive elements from another.