On 17 March 2026, AfaLab joined the EU Anti-Racism Conference in Brussels, where civil society actors, institutional leaders, and racial justice advocates gathered to discuss the EU’s anti-racism agenda.
AfaLab was represented by Hélène Himmer (external link), Partnerships and Advocacy Officer, who engaged with partners and institutions to strengthen alliances rooted in historical responsibility and reparatory justice.
At the conference, Isabelle Mamadou, Chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, placed the history of racial domination at the center of the discussion. She recalled how European governments and settler colonies built systems of racial superiority to justify slavery, colonization, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples.
This history continues to shape the present as it produced a hierarchy of human value that still treats Black lives as less worthy of protection, dignity, and care.
As the EU advances its Anti-Racism Strategy 2026–2030, AfaLab calls for an approach that confronts these roots directly. Racism cannot be treated as a recent or isolated problem. Today’s inequalities are the outcome of centuries of organized racial domination.
A serious anti-racism agenda must name the scale of harm, address its structural foundations, and create pathways toward accountability and reparatory justice.