Abstract

Emerging from a legacy of United Nations interventions on racism dating back to 1950, the Permanent Forum for People of African Descent (PFPAD) is a freshly minted mechanism, established in 2021. Despite its promise, and perhaps because of its novelty, PFPAD risks undermining the well-founded hopes invested in it: namely, due to a lack of a clear mission. Drawing on participant observation at the Third General Session, this article presents a critical legal and institutional analysis, arguing that the Forum remains caught in a cycle of performative politics, elite disconnection, and institutional inertia – epitomised by the ratification of a Second International Decade for People of African Descent. The analysis further identifies a diaspora gap, analysing the counter-productive dissociation between African and African-descendant identities which sidelines the continent and fractures pan-African solidarity. To realise its potential, the article contends, PFPAD must pivot from symbolism to substance by prioritising a single, concrete legal objective: the completion of the Declaration on the Human Rights of People of African Descent. This process is currently hampered by a procedural disconnect between the drafting Intergovernmental Working Group and the Forum’s public general sessions. Finally, the article advances a three-part blueprint for the PFPAD to build public value: 1) reconceptualising reparations as sustainable capacity-building rather than a onetime payout; 2) grounding PFPAD’s work in local action, including relocating its sessions to Africa and the Caribbean; and 3) leveraging comparative regional legal models, from CARICOM to the AfCFTA, to create a self-reliant, legally fortified, and truly unified global African diaspora.