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MESSAGE TO 250 MILLION AFRODESCENDANTS: OUR RIGHT TO RETURN TO AFRICA, REPARATIONS, THE UN, THE AU, THE AES, BURKINA FASO, PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE & THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

A MESSAGE TO THE 250 MILLION AFRODESCENDANT PEOPLES IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA CONCERNING OUR RIGHT TO RETURN TO OUR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS, REPARATIONS, THE UNITED NATIONS, THE AFRICAN UNION, THE ALLIANCE OF SAHEL STATES, BURKINA FASO, PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE AND THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

I have just returned from my 3rd visit to Burkina Faso, the 1st of which took place in May of 2024 as part of the historic delegation led by H.E. Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao. During that visit, a Concept Note was presented to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traore. This time, I prepared a Brief summarizing the developments since then and presented it to Minister Traoré through his Chief Advisor Hermann Toe and to President Ibrahim Traoré through Gaētan Alexis Windpanga Ouedraogo Special Advisor To President Traoré  Concerning Diaspora Issues.

This I did in my capacity as a Special Envoy to Burkina Faso representing both Afrodescendants and the larger African Diaspora following my interventions at the 38th Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union in Addis Ababa in February 2025 and the 83rd Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held in Banjul in May 2025, both of which followed my interventions at the United Nations at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd sessions of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) in 2023 and 2024 as well as the 1st and 2nd Accra Reparations Summits in 2023 and 2025. I, as an INDEPENDENT PARTICIPANT supported solely by individual contributions of people who desired my presence at such events and NOT FUNDED by philanthropic grants or governments, am, therefore, especially positioned and qualified, as the PEOPLES” WITNESS to discuss the state of affairs detailed in the title of this message and to draw comprehensive conclusions on where we are and what must be done. Here then, are my brief studied conclusions derived from genuine diplomatic efforts on behalf of Afrodescandants and African liberation.

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“To embark successfully in a career involving leadership demands a courageous and determined spirit. Once a person has decided upon his life’s work and is assured that in doing the work for which he is best endowed and equipped he is filling a vital need, what he then needs is faith and integrity, coupled with a courageous spirit so that no longer preferring himself to the fulfillment of his task he may address himself to the problems he must solve in order to be effective.” - Ethiopian Emperor, HIM Haile Selassie I

“Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others. Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories . . . .” - Amilcar Cabral

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RIGHT TO RETURN TO OUR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS

  1. ALL REPARATIONS CLAIMS on behalf of the Global Afrikan Family are and must be based on the fact that the Catholic Church unjustly authorized an evil European military invasion led by the Military Order of Jesus Christ headquartered in Portugal into the ancestral homelands of the people on the African continent. AFRICA IS THEREFORE THE LOCATION WHERE THE CRIME WAS COMMITTED AND THE DAMAGE TO AFRICAN PEOPLES WHICH IS ONGOING UNTIL REMEDIED IS THE FOCUS OF REPARATIONS. As I stated to the ACHPR, 

“The Abuja Proclamation appraises “the issue of  reparations in relation to the damage done to Africa and its Diaspora by enslavement, colonization, and neo-colonialism”. The AU Concept Note EX.CL/1528(XLV) states, “The Assembly further decided that the theme of the Year for 2025 will be ‘Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations” as well as designate the reparations for transatlantic-enslavement, colonialism and apartheid. . . .” Notice the construction here: reparations for transatlantic-enslavement always precedes colonialism and neo-colonialism. Thus, the first priority of reparations is to repair the first harm done which happened when African men, women and children were invaded and attacked by the Military Order of Jesus Christ after war was declared on them by Pope Nicholas the V on June 18, 1452. Captured African prisoners of war were forcibly trafficked across the Atlantic and subjected to the dehumanization processes that resulted in ethnocide. This is the first harm of enslavement that is the first priority of Africa’s Reparations claim.”

2. In Pan-Africanism and Nationality Rights For the Diaspora: A Contemporary  Perspective,  in Pan-Africanism, African Nationalism: Strengthening the Unity of Africa and its Diaspora  edited by B.F. Banke & K. Mchombu,  A. Bernard puts it this way:

“The Pan-Africanist Law of Return: Quintessential Reparations

At a very basic level, if reparation is to repair the wrongs committed against African peoples through slavery and its apprentices, colonization and imperialism, the first wrong committed was taking millions of peoples from their homeland. Those taken from Africa lost, among other things, their citizenship and this is the first thing that needs to be given back. It is morally and philosophically the first step in the journey of a thousand miles that needs to be undertaken if Africa and African peoples are to move forward in a forceful, positive and determined manner in the 21st Century.

Concomitant with this position therefore is that the law of return can only be made possible by African governments/states, not the West. It is to be stated clearly nonetheless, that this is a right, not a concession or special privilege. Diasporan repatriates should not have to prove which part of Africa they are from. The loss of this specific identity is a part of the harm done by slavery, and cannot be used by African governments to reject Diasporans. Any African government which challenges the right to return to Africa for proof of specific identity is in breach of their own claim for compensation for slavery.”

REPARATIONS

  1. After the first Africans were captured in the 1440s by the Military Order of Jesus Christ, as documented by Gomes Eannes de Azurara in Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Chronicle and Discovery of the Conquest of Guinea, then came the first war deaths and casualties - African blood shed on African soil. Thus, the trafficking and enslavement came first that resulted in an estimated 12 million victims enslaved in the Americas and then came the killing of Africans, resulting in an estimated 100 million deaths on African soil. The Netherlands formally abolished slavery in its colonies on July 1, 1863 and the United States proclaimed the 13th Amendment abolishing its slave trade on December 16, 1865. Using the latter date, that’s 150,896 days or 413 years, 1 month and 29 days of enslavement and death in warfare. Reparations are PRIMARILY concerned with THIS damage. 

  2. Then followed the scramble for Africa, formalized at the Berlin Conference in 1884 to 1885 and the period of colonisation and after that, neocolonialism. Starting from the US abolition of slavery, until today, that’s 58, 315 days, or 159 years, 7 months and 29 days. Reparations are SECONDARILY concerned with THIS damage.

  3. Reparations are in the process of being redefined to suit the purposes of the ruling classes of all nations and their governments. As an example, in 1900, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner said,

“We remained in slavery two hundred and fifty years, and have been free the best end of fifty more years. In other words we have been dominated over by the buckra, or white race, for about three hundred years. We have worked, enriched the country and helped give it a standing among the powers of the earth, and when we are denied our civil and political rights, (many) ridicule the idea of asking for a hundred million of dollars TO GO HOME, for Africa is our home and is the one place that offers us manhood and freedom, though we are the subjects of nations that have claimed a part of Africa by conquest. A hundred million dollars can be obtained if we, as a race, would ask for it. The way we figure it out, this country owes us forty billions of dollars, and we are afraid to ask for a hundred million. Congress, by its legislation, throws away over a hundred million annually.”

A further example is that in 1919 and the 1920s both Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois petitioned the League of Nations for the former German colonies to be given over for the purpose of creating a new African State and homeland controlled by African people where African people in the Diaspora could resettle. This form of reparations was denied, and instead, the “Protectorates” and “Mandates” system was implemented so that the colonial powers retained control of those territories.  Finally, as another example, in the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of reparations shifted to “debt relief” for African countries. Thus, while the 1993 Abuja proclamation “Exhorts all African states to grant entrance as of right to all persons of African descent and right to obtain residence in those African states, if there is no disqualifying element on the African claiming the ‘right to return’ to his ancestral home, Africa,” it “Further urges the OAU to call for full monetary payment of repayments through capital transfer and debt cancellation. Urges those countries which were enriched by slavery and the slave trade to give total relief from Foreign Debt, and allow the debtor countries of the Diaspora to become free for self-development and from immediate and direct economic domination. ” This was a shift from the earlier focus of the right to return and redress for unpaid slave labor which still has not been granted. Debt relief, rather than monetary payments, became the focus of global campaigns, was never granted and has now taken a back seat. Today, certain interests have positioned “racial healing” and “climate justice” as the new focus of reparations as these are “acceptable” issues for the ruling elites.  To be sure, consider that, 

"After all this time, has the African Union made REPATRIATION and CITIZIZENSHISP the priority during its AU THEME OF THE YEAR? Have formal agreement with African States and the AU pertaining to REPATRIATION and CITIZENSHIP been concluded? Have they even been brought to the table? Are the Afro Descendants in the AU 6th Region equal partners in determining AU principles, policies, and programs? Incredibly, Kyeretwie Osei, Head of Programmes at the AU ECOSOCC Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia gave an answer that the AU does not intend such things. Mr. Osei clearly stated that the AU is seeking “different interpretations of reparations . . . .” This can be seen, for example, in the numerous emphasis on “climate justice” with little to no mention of Repatriation and Citizenship. In fact, climate justice is fast becoming the leading talking point of the AU along with “debt relief”, and was butressed by the selection of European Climate Pact Ambassador in Belgium Ms. Fadeke Ayoola to lead off the Consultation’s presentation which focused on the current state of the Pan African financial architecture and and Lydia Chibambo who works with the Zambia Climate Change Network, to close the Consultation. Mr. Osei then made the audacious and patronizing claim that the “reparations process is AU led . . . designed and created by the AU. . . .” SEE: AU ECOSOCC DIASPORA CONSULTATIONS CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT AFRODESCENDANTS IN THE AU 6TH REGION

Consider further  the 27 February 2025 article by Tadesse Simie Metekia, Senior Researcher, Rule of Law, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in  Addis Ababa​ entitled: AU ‘Year of Reparations’ should look to the future and the past in which he says,

“Others contend that development aid, debt relief and foreign investment function as reparations, negating the need for further redress. . . . One way to address these challenges is by expanding the AU theme’s focus, which currently emphasises justice and healing for Africans and Afro-descendants. During implementation, the AU could approach reparations as a forward-looking global agenda aimed at repairing both victims and perpetrators. . . . Former colonial powers that profited from Africa’s suffering carry unresolved moral wounds. Societies built on slavery and colonial exploitation continue to grapple with racism, economic inequality and historical amnesia. Reparative justice offers these nations an opportunity to heal, confront their pasts, and rebuild relationships with African and Afro-descendants.”

Many within the Reparations Movement have justified this shift by saying that reparations is not just about the past, it is about the Africa we want now and in the future, while others don’t even consider Africa at all and simply want a more comfortable life in the land of their ancestors' captivity. Under this reasoning, many are no longer framing reparations as the just compensation  for enslavement but rather through the lens of “developmentalism” - a framework that is in “alignment” with governments’ objectives - Barbados is a good example - and is more palatable to European consciousness. This represents a crafty capture of the reparations narrative and objective. Why does the objective and narrative keep shifting without any reparations being received? Why move on to something else when the first claims have not yet been remedied? The ruling elites use philanthropy to produce controlled opposition, making calculated decisions and sacrifices pawns in order to save the king and queen. This was confirmed to me at the Accra Reparations Summit II, held in March 2025 during a conversation I had with the head of the MacArthur Foundation’s Reparations Division who told me that they actually had meetings and decided, as institutional policiy, to refrain from using the word “self determination” and any project proposals aimed thereto. . . .

My respnse to those within the movement who are attempting to redefine reparations is to make the counterpoint that when Africa’s Reparation claim is properly framed as War Reparations, or compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other that are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war, then we need not subject ourselves to manipulation by the successor regimes of the enslaving nations who wish to capture the reparations movement, redefine it in the form as debt restructuring, development aid and climate justice which suits their interests. Such a capitulation would shift the burden of paying for those damages to the victims of the Dum Diversas War. Our reparations are not to be used to cover other problems that the international community is responsible for.  We do not need to acquiesce to such a misstatement of reparations. If reparations is intended as compensation after the war with an aim to repair the dignity of the victims, then reframing reparations in a way that considers, even elevates, the interests and sensitivities of the enslavers continues the very indignity of the victims! The Ashkenazic victims of genocide were not forced to reframe their reparations in order to heal the Nazi perpetrators. Neither were the Japanese victims of America required to take into consideration the development plans and other responsibilities of the United States government. It is an offense to suggest, once again, that the burden of healing others falls on African people at the expense of their own direct interests.

THE UNITED NATIONS

  1. The United Nations is pursuing the strategy of "scientific colonialism” that it inherited from the League of Nations. As I clearly emphasized in my article,  IS THE UN PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT THE LATEST REFINEMENT OF SCIENTIFIC COLONIALISM?

“The  intellectual roots of the [League of Nations and United Nations policy towards colonial territories] can be traced back to the late nineteenth century and the rise of ‘developmentalism’ as a core tenet of liberal imperial planning in Britain. Colonial states were beginning to deploy new ways of intervening in the everyday lives of their colonial populations at this moment.

With the rise of social science research and the production of statistical analysis, states were much more capable of monitoring their domestic and colonial populations on a large number of metrics. As Timothy Mitchell has observed, ‘as Britain and other colonial powers faced a harder task in justifying the continuation of colonial occupation, new statistical work could clarify the purpose and authority of imperial government.’ Academics like Alfred Zimmern and colonial diplomats like Lord Milner theorized the British Empire as a family of states and state-like entities, some more mature than others, some possessing more international legal autonomy than others. Zimmern, one of the drafters of the League of Nations Covenant, described the British Commonwealth as a ‘procession’: ‘It consist[ed] of a large variety of communities at a number of different stages in their advance towards complete self government.’ Scientific colonialism supplied a logic of development, suggesting the possibility that territories could move from one category to another. The challenge as these thinkers saw it, particularly in Africa, was to promote a form of colonial rule that would both uplift the natives and provide for international free trade. British colonies and protectorates in India and Africa were taken as models, and Milner’s disciples had already suggested that such governance systems be exported to other colonial areas. . . .”

In short, colonialism has always been a process of moving from the exterior to the interior. At this point, scientific colonialism seeks access to our inner-most thoughts and consciousness. What better way than to create a forum and solicit the ideas and aspirations of the best thinkers and activists of African descent? The Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFAD) is the latest development of this strategy.

2. Few people know the origin of PFPAD and the bait and switch that took place. In his 1503  Petition for Reparations for African Americans that was delivered to the UN in 1994, the Honorable Silas Muhammad stated,

“Now African-Americans want their human rights, demands for equal status, self determination, and compensation for past and on-going gross violations to be heard and redressed, and are requesting U.N. assistance. This can be accomplished by observers being sent to the U.S., by an investigative committee, by a special rapporteur’s investigation, by the opening of a forum at the U.N. wherein any and all sectors of the African-American community and the U.S. government will be able, without fear of retaliation, to express their grievances on the issues of self-determination and reparation for past and on-going gross violations of their human rights, and seek U. N. assistance in defining and resolving the crisis in this relation which has proved so destructive, not just to African-Americans, but to America as a whole. In this endeavor, the U.N. can expect the full cooperation and assistance of the Nation of Islam, and the vast majority of other African-American groups and individuals.”

3. This was followed by no less than 52 written and oral statements made to the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Working Group on Minorities and the various World Conferences Against Racism during the period from 1997 to 2014.  Mr. Muhammad’s stated in his Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, August, 1999 Provisional Agenda Item 8: Prevention of discrimination against and the protection of minorities: 

“We charge civil death. The U.S., with knowledge that it has denied us our identity for the past 400 years, is in violation of both the aforementioned Covenant and Declaration. In articles 2 and 4, the Declaration stipulates that minorities have the right to protect their culture and identity. . . . Owing to plantation slavery, intercultural education is an impossibility for us. By forcibly depriving us of our "mother tongue," the Government of the U.S. deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need specific U.N. assistance. Absent knowledge of our mother tongue, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community, and preserve our individual identity? The annihilation of our "mother tongue" is the extermination of our identity. Absent our identity, we do not have our own culture. Absent culture, we are in a state of civil death. To destroy a people and their shared life is a crime. The U.N. can provide a remedy by establishing a forum for so-called African-Americans at the U.N. in New York. We want a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights -- which only we can reclaim or choose. Within a forum, we will 1) rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves; 2) openly discuss the devolution, in pertinent parts, of the Constitution of the U.S., which defines us as three-fifth of a human being; 3) make choices on the "mother tongue" or tongues we wish to speak; 4) discuss and conclude on the issues of reclamation, restoration, reparations and migration of some of us to a friendly nation; 5) then present this package to the U.N. in order that the U.N. can facilitate dialogue between us and the U.S. Government. The forum will provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.”

4. In August 2005, Mr. Muhammad made an Oral Statement to the 57th Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Agenda Item 5C: Prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities, in which he informed that “The Working Group of Minorities, inquiring into their area of expertise, found there was not a place established within the UN that Afrodescendants could fit, because Afrodescendants are coming back to life absent their mother tongue, original culture and religion. The Working Group on Minorities began seeking to find a way for us.”

5. On 2 August 2021, the General Assembly adopted its resolution 75/314, in which it formally operationalized the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) as "a consultative mechanism for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders as a platform for improving the safety and quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent. . . .” On April 19, 2024, in alignment with Mr. Muhammad’s original vision for a forum to “provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people” I invoked Resolution 75/314 that emphasizes that PFPAD can “request the preparation and dissemination of information by the United Nations system on issues relating to people of African descent . . .” and submitted a request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - an organ of the United Nations system - on “The status of Afro Descendant People as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and their right to conduct plebiscites for self-determination.” After mounting an international campaign pressuring PFPAD Presidents Epsy Campbell Bar and June Soomer to sign and submit the request to the ICJ, still it has not been done. Only lip service has been paid to it. 

6. Additionally, PFPAD Secretary Niraj Dawadi, immediately following the 3rd closing session in Geneva, felt it necessary to approach me to tell me that the Forum believes requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ is very important but that due to shortage of resources and time, the members have not had proper opportunity to discuss it yet have concluded that because of its importance, the Request must have broad support. Mr. Dawadi did not detail what was meant by broad support, or why a petition signed by 300 delegates which received a standing ovation from the floor, was not broad enough. More interesting, however, was the admission that the Forum is concerned that if they exercise their mandate as I have suggested, and the Forum goes directly to the ICJ, that it will, according to Mr. Dawadi, “open the flood gates to petitions.” The concern is that this would set a precedent and every group will then expect the forum to act on their petition. It should be noted this was the very issue that both the League of Nations and the United Nations faced at their establishment - the question of receiving petitions from non-state actors.

7. I have therefore concluded that the United Nations and PFPAD is merely an institution for scientific colonialism and will not bring the Request for an advisory opinion on the five questions that will set the foundation for our legal claim for Dum Diversas war damages and “the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.” 

8. Indeed, the case of the Israeli Genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza is the definitive proof that no justice can be expected from the UN system, as the ICJ ruled in favor of reparations to the Palestinians yet until now Israel has defied the ruling and continued its genocide and the UN has proven impotent to enforce its authority. As the Honorable Silas Muhammad asked the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights 56th Session 26 July to 13 August, 2004: “The UN is the greatest law-giver in civilized society. If we cannot call upon the UN, made up of civilized men and women, to grant us protected collective human rights, then who else can we call upon?”

9. Therefore, African people themselves must accept the fact that they must build sufficient compelling force and the ability to coerce the European nations to pay reparations. This can only be done by establishing a United African States with positive sovereignty that can withhold the essential earth minerals and raw materials which the Western world depends on to sustain its system of dominance until reparations and satisfaction is obtained.

THE AFRICAN UNION

  1. Both Omowale Malcolm X (1964) and Queen Mother Audley Moore (1975) brought the issue of Afrodescendant reparations to the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1996 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations granted consultative status to the Rastafari Movement who were represented by Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges. In 1998, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges asked: “What is the responsibility of the nations to Africans in the diaspora with respect to the age-old quest for Repatriation?” Said the Rasses, “Our advice from that committee and from the UN Office of Human Rights . . .. was simple:

“The United Nations as an organization of states cannot at this time in any serious way entertain the issue of repatriation without the consent of the African states and the African Governments to which we want to go in Africa. So we were directed to seek the support of African governments with respect to the acquisition of land. And after that, the matter can be brought up again to the United Nations and the issue of [settlement] can take place.”

When the OAU transformed into the AU and “invite[d] and encourage[d] the African Diaspora to full participation”, a moment for which I was physically present in the AU building on February 3-4, 2003, efforts then focused from the UN to the AU with great expectations bolstered by the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.

2. As stated in my introduction above, twenty-four years later I represented both Afrodescendants and the larger African Diaspora (the 6th Region of the AU) at the 38th Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union in Addis Ababa in February 2025 and the 83rd Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held in Banjul in May 2025. I have consistently raised the issue of the Afrodescendants Right of Return at the African Union and tracking its development since the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala, Uganda in 1974. 

2. I, along with many others, have attempted to work through the AU”s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) to develop a comprehensive AU Citizenship Policy. These efforts have consistently been sabotaged, and I detailed this both in 2019 and 2025. Moreover, in 2023, the African Union completed its takeover of the Reparations movement at its Accra Reparations Summit which I also attended. Based on my experience with the African Union, the  failure of its members, after 64 years, to recognize Afrodescendants as a unique class of immigrants, provide for their unqualified citizenship, and the fact that 70% of the AU’s budget comes from non-Africans, I have concluded that the African Union is an instrument of neocolonial control and impotent in its ability to solve Africa’s problems, including the citizenship issue of the Afrodescendants in its 6th Region.

3. Therefore, Afrodescendants themselves must accept the fact that they must build sufficient compelling force to convince African nations individually to fulfill their reparations obligations to the living descendants of people taken as prisoners of war from territories that are now under their national jurisdiction as signatories to the Geneva Convention. This can be achieved through building an Afrodescendant United Front that initiates negotiations with each AU member state and withholds support in the form of remittances, tourism, investment and skills transfer until satisfactory citizenship policies are legislated.

THE ALLIANCE OF SAHEL STATES (AES)

  1. Recently, the world witnessed the  2021 Malian revolution led by Assimi Goïta and the National Committee for the Salvation of the People which seized power in Mali after overthrowing the elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. 

  2. A faction of Burkina Faso's military overthrew their existing military government in the September 2022 revolution, installing Ibrahim Traoré over Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had come to power in the January 2022 coup d'état which toppled the democratic government of president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.

  3. In July 2023, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland removed the elected government of Niger's Mohamed Bazoum, installing Abdourahamane Tchiani and a new junta in the 2023 revolution.

  4. All three of the alliance's member states were suspended by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) shortly after the ouster of their elected governments. Those three nations then formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September 2023, with the signing of the Charter of Liptako-Gourma, following a meeting of the heads of state in Bamako, Mali. The AES aims to strengthen regional cooperation, particularly in defense and security, and to promote the sovereignty and development of the member states and has expressed intentions to move towards a confederation, indicating a desire for closer integration and cooperation beyond the initial defense pact. On 28 January 2024, the three countries announced via a joint statement that they were withdrawing from ECOWAS. In May 2024 at a meeting in Niamey, representatives of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger finalized a draft text creating the AES. The confederation was established on 6 July 2024 in Niamey.  On 29 January 2025, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formally withdrew from ECOWAS after providing the required 1-year notice. The withdrawal has resulted in ECOWAS losing 76 million of its 446 million people and a significant portion of its total geographical land area. The AES is now geographically larger than ECOWAS, covering 2,781,392 km2 compared to ECOWAS's adjusted 2,087,596 km2. To consolidate their exit from ECOWAS and strengthen their alliance, the three countries began circulating new AES passports, and announced that a new unified 5,000-strong military unit will soon join the fight against jihadists and terrorists on AES territory.

  5. The confederation's stated goal is to pool resources to build energy and communications infrastructure, establish a common market, implement a monetary union under proposed currency, allow free movement of persons, enable industrialization, and invest in agriculture, mines and the energy sector, with the end goal of federalizing into a single sovereign state. A project to set up passport and identity card travel documents between the three member countries of the AES is part of a more advanced integration between the member states before approval of the project by the three heads of state of the member countries. A joint biometric passport for AES citizens was recently introduced, but is already facing obstacles, with Senegal currently refusing to recognize the passport, putting in question the viability of the scheme. The confederation is against neo-colonialism and has demonstrated this with acts such as downgrading the status of the French language. renaming of colonial street names, and many other such initiatives. On 5 February 2025, the Member States of the Confederation of Sahel States signed a historic convention, establishing a common cultural policy. On 22 February 2025, the ministers of the Confederation of Sahel States officially launched the flag of the AES. At the end of March 2025, the three members of the confederation will introduce a common customs duty of 0.5% on imports from countries that are not members of the confederation of the alliance of Sahel states. Energy regulators from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger met in Bamako in May 2025 to harmonise their policies on energy security and promote renewable energy. The AES announced the creation of the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development (CBID) in May 2025. The bank is designed to provide autonomous financing for critical infrastructure and development projects across the Sahel and to reduce dependence on external institutions. The creation of the bank is a step toward financial sovereignty. The ministers of the Sahel Alliance states met in May 2025 to establish judicial cooperation within the AES. The meeting, chaired by Malian Prime Minister General Abdoulaye Maiga, focused on creating a common legal framework to address transnational challenges, including insecurity, arms proliferation, and money laundering. The goal is to enhance judicial convergence without unifying laws and to make systems interoperable while improving governance, legal protections, and institutional stability. The meeting resulted in the establishment of a regional criminal court aimed at addressing terrorism, violent extremism, and human rights violations within the Sahel region. Experts from the road authorities of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger met in May 2025, to define a common approach to road safety. The AES has created the Alliance of Agricultural Seed Producers of the Sahel (APSA-Sahel) to strengthen regional food sovereignty and promote seed systems locally adapted to the Sahel’s climate. The initiative is designed to reduce dependence on foreign seed imports, promote indigenous seed varieties, and increase seed research, production, and distribution in the sahel. From 21 to 28 June 2025, Mali hosted the first annual Alliance of Sahel States Games. More than 500 professional athletes from AES states competed in soccer, traditional wrestling, archery, and other events. Roaming charges for telephone communications between the three countries have been abolished. From August 11 to 15, 2025, parliamentarians and experts from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso met in Ouagadougou to make the draft Confederate Parliament of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) a reality.

  6. The AES has demonstrated the fortitude required to break from neocolonialism and stands in stark contrast to the AU and ECOWAS. For this reason, all available Afrodescedant resources should be spared in its support and protection in hopes that the AES proves itself to be the embryo of a revolutionary United African States invested with positive sovereignty of the people. Currently, the AES is the Pan Africanists’ best hope for complete African Liberation.

BURKINA FASO AND PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE

  1. The Republic of Burkina Faso, and especially its President Ibrahim Traoré, is the “face” of the AES. Global “Hands off President Traoré” demonstrations by the Afrikan Family on April 30 and May 25, 2025 have revealed a Pan African phenomenon with a potential for African Unity and African Liberation not seen since Kwame Nkrumah. 

  2. I have attended three important Afrodescendant delegations to Burkina Faso: May 2024 with H.E. Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao; July 2025 with the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré, and August 2025 with the RBG +126 Delegation led by Yaw Akyeaw. As part of these delegations, I have met with Karamoko Jean Marie Traore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and Burkina Faso Citizens Abroad; his  Chief of Staff, Mr. Hermann Yirigouin Toe, Minister Plenipotentiary Ambassador and Secretary General;  Samuel Kalkoumdo, Special Adviser on Social Cohesion and National Reconciliation to President Ibrahim Traoré; Gaētan Alexis Windpanga Ouedraogo, Special Advisor To President Traore in Charge of  Diaspora Issues;  Anûuyirtole Roland SOMDA, Minister Of Sports, Youths And Employment; his Chief of Staff, Tegviel Evariste Metuole Dabire; as well as the Mr Bassaloma Bazie,President of the Commission of the Alliance of Sahel States; and Mr. Ouattara Hayouba, President of the Patriotic Movement Fas First of Burkina Faso (M.P.F.A.) and Secretary General of the Director of the Confederation of Peoples of the Alliance of Sahel States and others. This has given me the opportunity to discuss many issues and learn many perspectives from Burkinabe people, Pan Africanists, Afrodescendants, government officials, business people, and a wide range of skilled people interested in contributing to the development and protection of Burkina Faso. Below are what I consider to be the most important lessons learned. You can read all of the updates since the May 2024 delegations in my brief that was submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Special Adviser to the President in Charge of Diaspora Issues.

  3. The support that the Global Afrikan Family is giving to President Ibrahim Traoré and the Burkinabe people is proving to be an effective “shield” against Western assination attempts against President Traoré. This was specifically stated by President Bazie during our July meeting.

  4. Contact with Burkina Faso Embassies in Washington DC and Accra, Ghana did not ensure proper arrangements and smooth runnings when the delegations arrived in Ouagadougou. Unfulfilled promised or expected itineraries, meetings and assistance plagued both the July and August delegations and everything had to be arranged in a haphazard fashion following no established protocol. Mr. Toe informed us during the August meeting that uncoordinated activity is overwhelming the various ministries. For example, everyone wants to meet with President Ibrahim Traoré. Mr. Toe emphasized that Burkina Faso still has a colonial system of administration and unfortunately, that is resulting in bureaucratic delays which the government realizes is frustrating our mutual collaboration.

  5. During the July meeting with the FPITW delegation, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Traore stated that the next step was developing a “broad framework” for Afrodescendant engagement, which we are eagerly awaiting. Following the FPITW delegation’s debriefing, on July 14 the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) announced “The government of  Burkina Faso has confirmed that the ADDI mission trip to include the conferment of Burkina Faso citizenship will take place from October 26th to November 8th, 2025.” In the August RBG 126+ meeting, Mr. Toe suggested that in the short term, all of us work to make the event in October a success. Towards that end, I submitted to the Minister of Sports a proposal for a one-day Pan African Sports Summit aimed at attracting college and professional athletes from the African Diaspora which was well received. However, in February of 2025, ADDI Founder H.E. Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao said this: 

“The people must come forward. People must come and say, ‘I can do this’ and then do it and continue to do it. So I am opening the door, and those who want to participate, you can organize yourself. . . .  But in terms of saying, ‘what is the Ambassador going to do’ what ended up in most of the cases is that everybody comes back and says, ‘Ambassador tell us what to do, Ambassador what should I do . . .’ I CANT DO THAT ANYMORE. I’ve done it for four years. So either you guys come together, organize yourself, I will open the doors, there are people on the ground who can support you. . . . I will open the doors and do everything that needs to be done for you to do your thing, but you have to walk the walk.”

6. On May 30, 2025 I informed H.E. Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao of the upcoming FPITW delegation stating, “the delegation respects the work that ADDI has done to open the doors in Burkina Faso and would like to meet with the ADDI team in Ouagadougou. . . . Progress on other initiatives include. . . 2. Dual citizenship; 3. The purchasing and opening of a Diplomatic Mission (Embassy) in Burkina Faso. . . . Please Advise” to which she responded, “That’s great. The more the merrier.” I then asked, “Has ADDI opened its office in Ouagadougou? Is it the one stop shop for Diaspora investors?” She replied, “We are working on it. I met with the Ambassador at length on Wednesday. It’s one of the things we discussed among several others.” Finally, I said, “Our delegation is trying not to cross wires or recreate a wheel. . . .  but support the things already done or planned. If you have boots on the ground, the delegates would like to connect and learn.” Her Excellency responded, “Glad to know you guys are going home. In order to avoid any confusion, please proceed with your agenda.” With that green light, the FPITW delegation established a headquarters in Burkina Faso.

7. It is for this reason that supporting and maintaining the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West (FPITW) headquarters as the “one stop shop” for Afrodescendant interested in Burkina Faso is of the highest priority. It is absolutely necessary that a qualified Afrodescendant fluent in French and having completed the New Afrikan Diplomatic and Civil Service Corps Certification be recruited to work alongside Mr. Ouattara Hayouba at the FPITW headquarters located at the African American Academy in the Ouga 2000 suburb of Ouagadougou. This office must be able to answer daily phone calls and emails, instruct people on processes, procedures, protocols, calendars of events, and best practices for operating in Burkina Faso. Mr. Toe acknowledged that such an operation would be of immense service. 

8. Burkina Faso, while it is breaking ties with its former French colonial masters, does not see the United States Government in the same light and is actively engaged in ongoing diplomacy and partnership deals, particularly in the field of military cooperation. It is a risk of falling for what Omowale Malcolm X called “American dollarism.” Special Advisor Ouedraogo informed the August delegation that Burkina Faso is not isolationist, and will work with anyone they deem genuine. He also stated that though Burkina Faso and President Ibrahim Traoré are Pan African, this alone will not be sufficient for partnerships. He said that Burkina Faso must get to know what is in the “inside” of the groups and delegations seeking partnerships. And this leads to the most serious concern at the moment.

9. There is considerable concern by both the Burkina Faso government and the delegations about CIA infiltration and the weaponizing of Black Americans for that purpose. In my May 3 2024 Letter and Concept Note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I concluded, “The idea is to make Burkina Faso the Ghana of the 1960s minus the CIA infiltration.” This issue became a serious reality when two individuals who had been in Burkina Faso for a month and who were not originally part of the RBG 126+ delegation, showed up and inserted themselves into the delegation. Both of them became suspicious and one of them has an active case seeking political asylum with the Burkina Faso Ministry of Refugees. This gentlemen informed Burkinabe officials to be very suspicious of Black Americans.  Indeed, it is known that in the 1970’s the CIA actively recruited Black Americans in Pan African organizations, especially professors, and sent them to Ghana. It would make sense that the CIA would attempt this again in order to get to President Ibrahim Traoré. The fact that everywhere in our own movements in the United States, everyone accused everyone of being an agent creates the disturbing problem that COINTELPRO sought to create: “Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. . . .Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two.” As explained by Christian Davenport's study on the demobilization of the Republic of New Afrika, How Social Movements Die, “dissidents become carriers of repressive experiences, which they thereafter take with them into the social movement, affecting all who come across them.” Sowing the seeds of discord so that no one trusts each other and there is a culture of paranoia is their objective and, sadly, is in full effect today. Almost everyone I work with has accused someone else that I work with of being an agent. Again, the COINTELPRO long term goal was PREVENT UNITY.  And this issue is related to the issue of citizenship.

10. The Right of Return is an unqualified right of Afrodescendants and does not depend on one’s economic, financial, social or educational situation. Nevertheless, as Marcus Garvey famously said, “I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.” The challenge is: how to balance the Right of Return, especially for well-meaning Pan Africanists with little resources against the security needs and the evil machinations of some skin folk who ain't kin folk? We hope to raise this issue with the Burkina Faso Committee on Citizenship that is preparing legislation as reported to us by Mr. Toe. The FPITW/RBG 126+ Citizenship Committee, composed of repatriation and citizenship pioneers, has requested that we be added as consultants to the Burkina Faso government’s Committee on Citizenship, which is expected to have some kind of report by the end of October. 

THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

  1. On March 19, 2025, I conducted a poll in Pan African networks and published the results in WHERE TO HOST A PAN AFRICAN CONGRESS? THE WAY FORWARD. The poll was conducted in response to the message “Convening the UBUNTU Pan African Congress to Re-anchor and Recenter the Pan African Movement Worldwide” posted in the Pan African Federalist Movement’s (PAFM) Google group. The author of that message, PAFM Secretary General Joomaay Faye, stated,  "The geopolitical context of today does not allow those of us Africans who can understand what is today at stake for our people, to continue to Sit Down and watch opportunists Take the Pan African Movement in HOSTAGE!  For this reason Let's ALL call for the Convening of the UBUNTU PAN AFRICAN CONGRESS (U-PAC) which will do everything humanly possible to Regroup All the Organizations of BLACK PEOPLE around the World to rekindle our Movement." [emphasis added]. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was the overwhelmingly most popular place desired to host a Pan African Congress that would make it possible to regroup all the Organizations of Black People around the world to rekindle our movement.

  2. I drafted a U-PAC Proposal that was accepted by The Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) that resulted in a formal letter on GPAM letterhead that was sent to President Ibrahim Traoré on April 5th.

  3. Unfortunately, the August delegation had little discussion with government officials concerning the proposed U-PAC. On July 16, 2025 GPAM Governing Council member Felipe Noguera informed me that the government of Burkina Faso and H.E. Arikana Chihombori Quao have decided to organize a Pan African meeting in conjunction with the ADDI organized citizenship conferment ceremony from October 26 through November 8. GPAM has decided to consider this as merely a regional Pan African gathering and NOT the proposed U-PAC that was conceived as the only way to bring the majority of the different Pan African factions together to produce a definitive Pan African agenda and plan of Action for the coming few years and beyond. 

  4. Meanwhile, on June 18, I received an invitation from Professor Robert Dussey, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and Togolese Abroad for the Republic of Togo to be a keynote speaker at the 9th Pan African Congress to be held in Lomé, Togo from December 8-12, 2025 under the theme, “Renewal of Pan Africanism and Africa’s Role in the Reform of Multilateral Institutions: Mobilizing Resources and Reinventing Itself to Act”. Then, on August 8, I received the following message:

“BOYCOTT THE 9TH PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS IN TOGO, DECEMBER 2025 

We, the undersigned progressive organisations and individuals committed to the true principles of Pan-Africanism, urgently call for the global boycott of the 9th Pan-African Congress (PAC) scheduled to take place in Lomé, Togo in December 2025.

 The Betrayal of Pan-Africanist Principles 

The Pan-African Congress movement was founded on the principles of Liberation, Self-Determination, Democracy and Justice for African people worldwide. The second Pan-African Congress (1919) convened by W.E.B. DuBois demanded an end to colonial oppression and the right of Africans to govern themselves. Subsequent Congresses reinforced these values, standing against autocracy, neocolonialism and the exploitation of African people, worldwide.

Today, the Togolese government, led by Faure Gnassingbé, represents the very antithesis of these principles. For 58 years, Togo has been ruled by a single family, first by Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who seized power in a military coup in 1967, and now by his son Faure Gnassingbé, who has been in power since 2005. The regime has systematically suppressed dissent, rigged elections and violently crushed protests.

The Current Crackdown in Togo 

Recent reports confirm that the Togolese government is brutally repressing protests against constitutional amendments designed to extend Faure Gnassingbé’s rule. Security forces have met peaceful demonstrators with live ammunition, arbitrary arrests, and intimidation. This repression exposes the regime’s contempt for democracy and the rights of African people – values that the Pan-African Congress was meant to uphold.

Why we must boycott the 9th PAC in Togo 

Hosting the 9th Pan-African Congress in Togo under these conditions would legitimize an autocracy that oppresses its own people. It would betray the legacy of Pan-Africanism, which has always stood with the masses, not with autocrats. 

Neocolonialism in Practice: The Gnassingbé dynasty is a relic or colonial-era strongman rule sustained by foreign interests and military repression.  

A mockery of Pan-Africanism: True Pan-Africanism cannot coexist with tyranny. The PAC must not be used to whitewash a regime that silences dissent, and the unexplained murder of Comrade Tavio Amorin, a leading revolutionary Pan-Africanist.

Solidarity with the Togolese People: Attending this Congress would ignore the suffering of the ordinary Togolese fighting for democracy.

We urge all genuine Pan-Africanists, Activists, Scholars and Organizations to:
1.       Boycott the 9th PAC to be held in Togo in December 2025. Do not lend credibility to a repressive regime.

2.       Amplify the Voices of the Oppressed. Stand in solidarity with grassroots movements in Togo demanding freedom.

3.       Reclaim Pan-Africanism. Support alternative gatherings that centre the struggles of African people, not dictators.

We understand the deep desire of the African Diaspora to reconnect with the continent. However, we must ensure that this reconnection does not empower those who deny Africans on the continent their basic rights.

- No to the exploitation of Pan-Africanism!  - No to autocracy in Togo! - Solidarity with the Togolese people!

From: PACC  (Positive Action Citizens Coalition)

Co-Coordinators:

Explo Nani-Kofi and Nana Ama Dankwa Konadu

5. These issues were previously discussed on October 5, 2024 when SYANSKILTI Institute and the Forum One Afrika Group hosted the State of the Pan Africanist Movement in Africa Today featuring Lazare Ki-Zerbo, Lagoke Gnaka,  Felipe M. Noguera, Abuy Nfubea, Joomaay Faye, myself  and others. There is now a need for a second such forum, which is being planned to take place two weeks from now.

6. It is my conclusion that only a U-PAC hosted by the AES and convened by President Ibrahim Traoré in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in May 2026 can capitalize on the current unifying phenomenon that is the AES and President Ibrahim Traoré. Such a U-PAC  can bring together the most inclusive gathering of Pan Africanists and go a long way towards saving the every-splintering Pan African Congresses and Pan African Movement. 

OVERALL CONCLUSION

MARCUS GARVEY - 1924

“Let the Negro couple the urge for money with nationalism, so that in another hundred years—he will have a formidable and well - established nation to protect him any where he happened to find himself with his wealth. There is no better place than Africa, his original home. The Negros of the world should concentrate on making money and in using part of it for helping to establish an independent nationalism in Africa. . . The thoughtful and industrious of our race want to go back to Africa, because we realize it will be our only hope of permanent existence. We cannot all go in a day or in a year, ten or twenty years. It will take time under the rule of modern economics, to entirely or largely depopulate a country of a people, who have been its residents for centuries, but we feel that with proper help for fifty years, the problem can be solved. . . . Men, there is much to live for, and there is much to die for. The man, the race of nation that is not prepared to risk life itself for the possession of an ideal, shall lose that ideal. If you, I repeat, must be free, you yourselves must strike the blow. . . . Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must first of all think in terms of blood. Why even the Heavenly Father tells us that ‘without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins.’ Then how in the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to redeem Africa without preparing ourselves, some of us to die. . . . LEADERSHIP means everything PAIN, BLOOD, DEATH. Let Africa be our guiding Star, OUR STAR OF DESTINY. . .” ― Marcus Mosiah Garvey

RAYFORD LOGAN - 1945

“Is it too utterly fantastic to conceive that black men will one day perfect an atomic bomb? No, it is not. I can picture an international conference, not more than twenty-five years from now, in which a black delegate will rise and declare: ‘Gentlemen: five hundred years is long enough for any people to be held in bondage, degraded, spit upon, exploited, disfranchised, segregated, lynched. Here is the formula for a home-manufactured atomic bomb. Give us liberty, or we will give you death.” - Rayford Logan, Coordinator of the 2nd Pan African Congress and  chief advisor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on international affairs, The Negro in the Post-War Period, 1945

OMOWALE MALCOLM X - 1964

“The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here.” - Interview with Malcolm X, by A.B. Spellman, Monthly Review, Vol. 16, no.1 May 1964

ETHIOPIAN EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I. KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, CONQUERING LION OF JUDAH, ELECT OF GOD - 1966

“For a number of years now the problem of South West Africa has become the major concern of the African countries. Liberia and Ethiopia, as former members of the League of Nations, acting on behalf of all African States, had sued South Africa for violating her mandate in South-West Africa by introducing the policy of apartheid into that territory and by failing in her obligation to promote the interest of the African population. After six years of litigation, the International Court of Justice decided that the two states did not establish legal status in the case to stand before the Court, thus reversing its judgment of jurisdiction given in 1962. This unfortunate decision has profoundly shaken the high hopes that mankind had placed in the International Court of Justice. The faith man had that justice can be rendered is shattered and the cause of Africa betrayed.” - Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I at the opening session of the OAU on November 6, 1966

NEELY FULLER JR. - 1984

“For victims of white supremacy, your intermediate goal towards the production of universal man and universal woman - and there’s two things you set as a goal when you start out in resisting white supremacy and trying to eliminate it and replace it with justice, and that is 1) replace white supremacy with justice between people or kill all of the non-white people of the known universe. That’s what you are trying to force the white supremacist to do. Why? Because whatever you do to oppose them, if they’re not going to go along with it that’s what they are going to do anyway. If they are going to kill all the non-white people of the known universe, you want to put them in that position where they have to make that decision. Either replace the system of racism with justice - that’s one thing they can do, because that’s what you are trying to force them to do or persuade them to do - and the other thing, if they can’t do that or don’t want to do it, you force them or persuade them to actually kill all of us, the non-white people of the known universe. And it's logical because, if you are opposing something that doesn’t want to be moved, you leave them with no other option. That’s what you want to do - leave them with no other options.”   - Neely Fuller Jr., The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept: A Compensatory Counter-Racist Codified Word Guide

  1. In 1924 Garvey said it would take 100 years (2024) for Afrodescendants to have a strong and powerful nation capable of protecting us. He also said it would take just fifty years (1974) for the industrious of the race to return to Africa to build that nation. He said we must strike the blow and be prepared to die.

  2. In 1945, Rayford Logan predicted that in twenty-five years (1970) we would need to threaten the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve African Liberation. 

  3. In 1964, Malcolm X said that our long range goal was to migrate back to Africa. That was sixty-one years ago.

  4. In 1966, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I said that “The faith man had that justice can be rendered is shattered and the cause of Africa betrayed.”

  5. Profound sustained efforts by many people have been made at the highest levels at the UN, AU and elsewhere for justice through reparations due for damages inflicted and sustained through 209,342 days  (572 years, 11 months and 4 days) since the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict declaring total warfare on African peoples. When one reviews the records of the UN and the AU concerning these efforts, it is clear that the major objectives clearly laid out concerning reparations and repatriation have not been met.  Only lip service has been paid and the time for mere talk is up! The powder keg of escalated retaliation and second strikes against our enemies and oppressors, both white and black, must now be lit. We must put them in the position to either replace the system of white supremacy with justice or force them to kill us all! Otherwise, we surrender to white supremacy and alien domination.

SOONER OR LATER, WE MUST ISSUE A MOBILIZATION ORDER FOR RETALIATORY SECOND STRIKES THAT READS LIKE THIS:

“We have been under attack for more than 209,342 days. Men over the age of seventy (70) years - kiss your wives and children and grandchildren goodbye and set the example of restored  dignity and courage. Destroy critical infrastructure and/or attack government officials wherever you are, both white and black, who have proven themselves enemies of our just cause of Reparations. Follow Neely Fuller’s instruction to kill yourself after killing as many white supremacists as you can. Make the sacrifice of your life joyfully, sparing your children and grandchildren the necessity of giving their lives. Let us see hundreds of thousands of elderly black men dying in courageous fighting and suicide/martyrdom bombings in defence of Reparations since they are soon to die anyway and our only future otherwise is continued perpetual servitude. In remembrance of our courageous and defiant ancestors living on plantations, let our final cry and campaign hashtag be ‘#burncrops’ and ‘#grindglass’.”

RBG +126 DELEGATION STARTS VISIT IN BURKINA FASO, VISITS FRIENDS OF PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE IN THE WEST (FPITW) HEADQUARTERS

August 3, Ougadougou, Burkina Faso - Fifteen delegates arrived today in Ougadougou to further support from the African Diaspora to the Alliance of Sahel States and especially Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore. Members of the delegation which included the organizer Yaw Akyeaw and Special Envoy to Burkina Faso Siphiwe Baleka representing the Friends of President Ibrahimg Traore in the West (FPITW) were received in the VIP room at Ougadougou Thomas Sankara International Airport by Samuel Kalkoumdo, Special Adviser on Social Cohession and National Reconciliation to President Ibrahim Traore and Commandant Karambiri. Joining the delegation was His Majesty Chief Samand Naaba, Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the great President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, Professor Obadele Kambon of Ghana, Dr. Ousmane Camara, Presidential candidate in the upcomming elections in the Ivory Coast, and Ouattara Hayouba, President of the Patriotic Movement Fas First of Burkina Faso (M.P.F.A.) and Secretary General of the Director of the Confederation of Peoples of the Alliance of Sahel States.

After a grand luncheon reception at Hotel Azalai, the delegation was then received by Mrs. Makini Tchameni at the African American Academy.

The delegation ended the tour with a visit to the new office of the Friends of President Ibrahim Traore in the West (FPITW) that will serve as the African Diaspora’s “embassy” in Ougadougou and one-stop-shop for information on how to visit, invest, repatriate, get citizenship and support the Burkinabe revolution and the Alliance of Sahel States.

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Special Envoy to Burkina Faso Siphiwe Baleka Discusses The Global African Struggle Against US Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism on Time for an Awakening with Brother Elliott

"Time for an Awakening" with Bro. Elliott, Sunday 07/20/2025 at 6:00 PM (EST) guests; Organizer, Special Envoy to Burkina Faso for the Afodescendant Nation, Siphiwe Baleka , and Activist, Jurisconsult, founder of the International Movement for African Reparations, Esther Xosei . As major participants of the July 4th Black Independence Day Program, involving Afrodescendants of the Sixth Region, Afrikans in the U.K., and representative nations from the African Continent, Sister Esther and Brother Siphewe gave their perceptions and insights of the historic event in which they were involved. They also share an overview of the global African struggle against Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism. Always conversation on topics that affect Black people locally, nationally, and internationally.

timeforanawakening.com

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

NEW! CITIZENSHIP UPDATE FOR GUINEA BISSAU, BURKINA FASO AND BENIN

July 15 - Bissau, Guinea Bissau and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Nine (9) more naturalization applications have been completed and are now ready to go before the Republic of Guinea Bissau’s Council of Ministers for final approval. Early this year, twenty people of Guinean origin, as proven by the African Ancestry dna test, were granted citizenship. Five of them have since returned to their ancestral homeland to receive their passports. Another twenty or also being processed and will be ready to go before the Council of Ministers before the end of the summer. For all this, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has praised President Umaro Sissoco Embaló.

Siphiwe Baleka, President of the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA) and Coordinator for Guinea Bissau’s Decade of Return program stated,

“More and more people are looking to their ancestral homeland both as a place of refuge and as a place of opportunity. It is among my greatest achievements to have helped so many Afrodescendants exercise their Right to Return and repair the damage of ethnocide and loss of their identity and status in the world. Citizenshp in one’s ancestral homeland is the first reparation that African Union member statess must provide before any reparations from the enslaving nations.”

President Ibrahim Traore and the Republic of Burkina Faso is now joining Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Benin in granting Citizenship to Afrodescendants. Yesterday at 10:23 pm, following the Friends of President Ibrahim Traore in the West delegation’s debriefing following their succesful mission to Burkina Faso, the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) announced,

The government of Burkina Faso has confirmed that our ADDI mission trip to include the conferement of Burkina Faso citizenship will take place from October 26th to November 8th, 2025. Come to our zoom meeting Saturday, July 19th at 11:00 am EST to find out more.”

According to the ADDI Website, on January 18, 2025  ADDI announced that President Traore put an executive order in place in which “The government of Burkina Faso has asked ADDI to spearhead a citizenship initiative that invites African Diaspora to apply to be citizens of Burkina Faso.

  1. There will be two Tiers of applications.

    • Tier I=All those who have traced their lineage to Burkina Faso through their DNA.

    • Tier II=Any black Diaspora

The government of Burkina Faso has indicated that the ceremony conferring citizenship will happen in June 2025.” That ceremony has now been confirmed to take place from October 26th to November 8th.

Meanwhile, back in September, 2024, Benin’s President, Patrice Talon, passed a law in September 2024 that gives citizenship to those who can trace their lineage to the slave trade, part of an attempt by the country to reckon with their participation in the slave trade. The way the law works is that anyone over the age of 18 who does not already hold African citizenship and can provide proof that an ancestor was deported via the slave trade anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa is eligible to become a citizen of Benin. Benin’s authorities will accept a variety of materials, including DNA tests, authenticated testimonies, and family records. Applications will be vetted, applicants will receive a provisional certificate of nationality, which is valid for three years, and in order to complete the process, they must stay in Benin at least once within the three years to become a citizen.

Applications for recognition of Beninese nationality for Afro-descendants must be submitted via the https://afrodescendant.gouv.bj platform. According to the website,

“The provisional certificate of recognition of nationality is issued within one (01) month. Applications for definitive attestation of Beninese nationality by recognition are submitted to the Minister of Justice by the applicant who is physically present on the territory of the Republic of Benin.

The provisional certificate gives the beneficiary freedom of entry, residence and exit from the territory of the Republic of Benin.

Beninese nationality by way of recognition is granted by a decree issued by the Council of Ministers on a proposal from the Minister of Justice. Beninese nationality by recognition confers on the beneficiary :

  - freedom to enter, reside in and leave the territory of the Republic of Benin.

- the right to a certificate of Beninese nationality by recognition and a Beninese passport.

- the right to pass on Beninese nationality to descendants.

Beneficiaries of Beninese nationality by recognition may acquire full Beninese nationality and all the rights attached thereto at any time, in accordance with the legislation on nationality. 

Next Steps Following Historic Mission of the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation

July 10 - The Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West (FPITW) delegation has returned from its historic mission to Burkina Faso.

A virtual debrief on Monday, July 14 at 8:00 PM EST has been scheduled where the Delegation will share highlights and extraordinary insights from their recent historic journey to Burkina Faso. This briefing will provide an inside look at our experiences on the ground, key findings, and the meaningful connections forged with leaders and communities.

Join the July 14 Virtual Debrief Zoom Meeting a 8:00 PM EST:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87284524405?pwd=z170AEDg4kUCOnY5ZAfmaK1Qn9CgfP.1&jst=2

Afrodescendant Special Envoy to Burkina Faso, Mr. Siphiwe Baleka and Afrodescendant Nation Lead Counsel Harriet AbuBakr with Burkina Faso Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traoré in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Already many are already asking, “what’s next?” During our meeting with the Burkina Faso Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traoré, it was agreed that a “broad framework” for engagement was the next order of business. Here are some important developments:

  1. FPITW has opened an office inside the École Américaine de Ouagadougou to serve as the headquarters for activities in support of Burkina Faso, its people and its President and thereby to assist in supporting the Alliance of Sahel States.

2. The École Américaine de Ouagadougou (The African American Academy) is offering an exciting global opportunity available to passionate young people in our community: the Teach For Africa Fellowship Program.

Through this paid fellowship that includes competitive local stipend plus housing assistance and flight reimbursement for a two year commitment, recent graduates and aspiring leaders have the chance to teach at an African-centered schoo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, gain international work experience, and contribute to empowering youth through education. Fellows receive professional training, mentorship, and support while immersing themselves in African culture and making a lasting impact.

The African American Academy is currently recruiting talented individuals from our local community who:
Hold a Bachelor’s degree (any field)
Are passionate about leadership, youth development, and Africa
Are eager to grow personally and professionally through global experience

No teaching experience is required—comprehensive training is provided.

This program can help transform the lives of many promising young people in our community.

For more details or to apply, please visit www.aaa-bf.org or email admin@aaa-bf.org with any questions.

3. The next delegation, consisting of sixteen people, will take place August 3-10 for a Diaspora Business and Investment Forum and will again meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.E. Karamoko Traoré. Out of this tangible investment and development initiated by Afrodescendants must be realized because this is what Burkina Faso needs now.

4. FIPAN (Nguekhokh International Pan -African Festival) 2025 in Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) will be held from October 1 to October20,

* What is Fipan?

The Fipan or International Pan -African Festival of Nguekhokh, is a great gathering of economic, political, social and cultural actors on the continent, and, of its diasporas in order to discuss and propose solutions on issues and news challenges.

It is a framework for reflections, proposals and actions for which, basic organizations, must harmonize their approaches for more impact at the community level.

Our ideal is the construction of an African federal state, however this process requires coordinated actions conducted by Pan -African civil society, before leaning on the institutional and political scheme existing adapted to African realities.

* When and where did the FIPAN were born?

The FIPAN is set up in 2015 in the commune of Nguékhokh in the city of Mbour in Senegal, to offer a framework for reunion and exchanges to Pan -Africanism.

* Fipan vision

FIPAN is intended to be a geopolitical and diplomatic instrument of peoples, built around culture, art, by allowing an interconnection between actors, between institutions and between policies to lead to a concrete fusion in a dynamic process of endogenous development.

It is a school, to participate in mental deconstruction and ideological training by pooling achievements and experiences.

* Who participates in the fipan?

More than 20 African delegations and diasporas.

Cultural actors, craftsmen, artists, politicians, students, students, sociologists, guarantors of African ancestral values ​​... (all social components).

* Where and when will the 10th edition be held?

The 10th will be held in Ouagadougou capital of Burkina Faso, from October 01 to 20, 2025.

* What will this 10th edition wear?

For this 10th edition of the FIPAN, the main theme will focus on:

The challenges of economic sovereignty, practical case: alliance of the states of the Sahel (AES)

* What activities are planned?

- Conferences- Debates - Panels

-Ciné-forum

-Theatres-concert-taders

-Avisit of historical sites

-Righty

-Foire -Exposition

-Arebres to palaver etc ...

5. Burkina Faso may be holding the next Pan African Congress in May of 2026. On April 5, 2025, following the proposal submitted by Siphiwe Baleka, the Governing Council of the Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) officially proposed that the Alliance of Sahel states sponsor the Congress to be hosted in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The letter to President Traoré stated,

“In addition to majority support within the Governing Council, we/I received an overwhelming mandate from the Latin American/Caribbean Regional Preparatory Conference for 8th PAC which convened on the 30th of March, 2025, to approach Your Excellency and request through your Office, that the Confederation of Sahel States co-host the 8th Pan African Congress over a period of five days toward the end of November in Ougadougou.”

It has been reported to this author that Traoré administration has initially agreed although there is now some debate about the original date which might not be enough time for proper organizing and which would directly conflict with the 9th Pan African Congress that is planed to be held in Lome, Togo from December 8 to the 12. Thus, the new date of May 2026 is being discussed for Burkina Faso and we pray that this comes to fruition.

Join the July 14 Virtual Debrief Zoom Meeting a 8:00 PM EST:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87284524405?pwd=z170AEDg4kUCOnY5ZAfmaK1Qn9CgfP.1&jst=2

Honoring the Father of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD): Silis Muhammad and His Interventions On Behalf of Afrodescendant Self Determination

“Self Determination is our right, Separation with all our might, Reparations is our fight.”

“The prayers of African Americans for justice and reparations have been rejected by the U.S. Government and, seemingly, the United Nations. Because the struggle seems hopeless, the African American population has reached a state of extreme anxiety. We observe that some leaders are considering changing their tactics because of the failure of peaceful and legal means of solving the problem. We believe that African Americans may decide to use extreme measures and thereby gain the attention of the world community. We fear that the U.S. Government may respond with imprisonment of African American leaders.”

— The Honorable Silis Muhammad, written statement to the United Nations, 1997

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that recognition of the inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Here, at the beginning of the histories of the so-called African-Americans, the enslaved Africans brought to America were defined in the same terms as the ‘cattle’ belonging to Anglo-American rulers. Thus, our rights were those of their ‘cattle’: ours were not human rights. Yet we were then-and are, still, members of the human family. Our inalienable rights were distorted so completely, that we are damaged goods, still. We are lost from our original inherent culture, religion and language. America cannot lawfully force us to accept the choices which she deems to be our inalienable rights; nor can she force us and our progeny to abandon the hope for the reclamation of our own. One hundred thirty four years of forced assimilation has not abrogated the desire to know, and to be ourselves. Today, we have no permanent national recognition, as a result of slavery. We have been identified as slaves, Niggers, Negroes, Coloreds, Black-Americans and today we are so-called African-Americans. Thus, we are to this day a revolving nation, suspended within a nation: rent from our roots, as a result of slavery and its lingering effects. We are detached, still, from our inalienable rights. To this extent, the very foundation upon which freedom, justice and peace among nations is established is for us non-existing; our inalienable rights are extinct! Recognition of inalienable rights, for us, is a faith hoped for. And this poses a threat to peace for the United States of America, for the Americas and potentially for Europe. Why? It is a threat because of the despair of the many; which will endlessly be ignited to loathing and, or rioting. It will be ignited, lawlessly, by the perpetual humanitarian desires of the few: if the fever, or this abnormal situation, is not reversed by the few humanitarians who aim lawfully and by sanctions to efficaciously stamp out violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. . . . African-Americans have looked toward and exhausted all remedies made available by the majority government, although, it is viewed as the oppressor. . . . We wish to address the question of whether we choose to reclaim or recapture our original culture, language, religion and identity, or whether we choose to assimilate into the majority culture of America. Upon this matter we have never enjoyed the freedom of choice. We pray to the Commission on Human Rights for the right to make our choice within the protection of a United Nations Forum.”

- The Honorable Silis Muhammad written statement to the 55th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights

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Mr. Muhammad’s abbreviated list of United Nations (UN) interventions delivered in advancement of Afrodescendant human rights and reparations for plantation slavery is listed below:

  • 1994 Petition for Reparations to the UN under 1503 Procedure - Mr. Muhammad delivered a 1503 communication to the UN WOrking Group on Communications on behalf of African Americans. Although it was received, it was not heard nor was it responded to by the UN.

  • 1997 Written Statement to the UN - Mr. Muhammad recommended a forum so that African-American human rights grievances, that formed the basis of a petition submitted, can be expressed systematically, as well as officially recorded, evaluated and remedied. [Siphwe Note: Here then is the vision that first called for the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD)].

  • 1998 Written and Oral Statments - Mr. Muhammad urged the Commission on Human Rights to assist African Americans in their efforts to recover from official U.S. policies of enslavement, apartheid, and forced assimilation. Mr. Muhammad prayed that the human rights of African Americans be recaptured politically and amicably, rights to self-determination rectified, and the damages sustained be awarded in great measure in order to accomplish the cathartic cleansing mentally, emotionally, and physically of 400 years of long-suffering. Mr. Muhammad prayed that the U.S. Government not be given tacit approval of the UN to subvert the opening of a forum wherein African-AMerican grievances can be expressed systematically and officially recorded, evaluated and remedied.

  • 1999 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad requested recognition of the African American choice of human rights and inalienable rights. He requested the crime of plantation slavery, and its lingering effects, be rectified - which was, and is still, a crime against African Americans and against humanity. Mr. Muhammad asked the U.N. to establish a forum for the purpose of restoring African American human rights, their political being, and their status as a people. Mr. Muhammad urged recommendation that the Sub-Commission pass a resolution recognizing slavery and the slave trade as a crime against humanity. He urged the writing of a working paper as a way to begin analyzing African American’s situation. Mr. Muhammad urged African American inclusion in the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, or a new declaration be written for African Americans. Mr. Muhammad asked the International Labor Organization to look into America’s privately owned prisons.

  • 2000 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad asked that the U.S. pay reparations to the so-called African Americans, since the U.S. cannot restore the “mother tongue” of African Americans if ever it wanted to. Mr. Muhammad recommended the U.S. be held liable, at the least, for the last 51 years, plus the additional years which are needed to resolve this issue. He asked that the UN place a reparation sanction upon America if the identity and language of minorities and Peoples are to be preserved. Mr. Muhammad asked that a precise dollar amount be given at a future date, if warranted, and that he stated that he would ask for the release of a number of African-American human rights victims who have been unjustly incarcerated in federal and state penitentiaries. Finally, Mr. Muhammad asked the UN to impose a sanction on the U.S. in the form of exemption from all taxation upon our people for as longa s this issue is in the hands of the UN.

  • World Conference Against Racism Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad recommended that the World Conference Against Racism declare a decade to consider the issues of slave descendants, including whether “LOST FOND Peoples” is the term that best identifies slave descendants.

  • Regional Seminars for Afrodescendants Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad put forth the name Lost Found Peoples as a name in order to gain human rights protection for slave descendants, but the name Afrodescendants was agreed upon by unanimous consent.

  • 2001 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad urged UN intervention to protect and assist African-American leaders within a forum as they seek to determine the damage they have sustained and the means of reparation needed in order to bring them back to life as a People. Mr. Muhammad prayed for the Commission on Human Rights to hear the African American demand for the right to choose to reconstitute, and reconstruct lost ties, since no international instruments, arbitrations, mechanisms or laws requiring the recognition of minorities that can restrain ethnic conflict during 2001. Attorney Harriet AbuBakr, Mr. Muhammad’s wife, asked the Working Group on Minorities to cause minority protection to develop in accord with the African American needs for resurrection.

  • 2002 Written and Oral Statements - On behalf of African Americans, Mr. Muhammad asked the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights to acknowledge the decision that African Americans be recognized as Afrodescendant Minorities. Mr. Muhammad also recommended that the Commission on Human Rights pass a resolution requesting that the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights place African Americans on its agenda, alongside Indigenous Peoples and Minorities. Mr. Muhammad also put forth a prayer for official recognition of a self-chosen collective identity and reparations for African Americans.

  • 2003 Written and Oral Statments - Mr. Muhammd requested official recognition of new minorities, urged the establishment of an International Year for Minorities, requested support for the efforts of the Working Group on Minorities, and recommended that the Working Group on Minorities organize a second Regional Seminar for Afrodescendant Minorities. Attorney AbuBakr asked the Working Group on Minorities to validate Afrodescendants self-chosen identity in its documents, and use any other means available to place the fact of the existence of Afrodescendants before the UN and the world.

  • 2004 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad called upon the UN to grant Afrodescendants protected collective human rights. Mr. Muhammad also asked the Sub-Commission to make a commitment to minorities that their interventions will be heard. Mr. Muhammad requested the recognition, protection and assistance of the Commission on Human Rights, and the authorities of the UN.

  • 2005 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad recommended santions against all governments that have deprived Afrodescendants, for every day Afrodescendants have been so denied human rights. He also requested assistance to Afrodescendants in efforts to have a self-chosen identity recognized and protected by the entire UN and by the governments under which Afrodescendants live.

  • 2006 Written and Oral Statements - Mr. Muhammad requested formal UN recognition of slave descendant’s self-chosen name, Afrodescendants, and requested restoration of slave descendants to the human families of the earth.

  • 2008 Oral Statment - Mr. Muhammad requested that the UN Working Group on Minorities assist Afrodescendants to establish education for Afrodescendants in their original (mother) tongue.

  • 2014 Open Letter to U.S. President Barack Obama - Mr. Muhammad sent a letter to U.S. President Obama, Congress, General Dempsey, and the Pope of Rome requesting reparations for Afrodescendants.

MY CONNECTION TO SILiS MUHAMMAD

Though I have yet to meet him, I feel a strong connection to the Honorable Silis Muhammad. And that’s because in 1997, I was tasked with studying and submitting a petition to the UN under its 1503 procedure by a former student of Malcolm X, Dr. Y.N. Kly. Although petitioning the United Nations was nothing new - W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey had petitioned the League of Nations, and William Patterson, Paul Robeson and Queen Mother Audley Moore had already petitioned the United Nations, the 1503 procedure was new. In my studies, I came across Silis Muhammad’s 1994 1503 Petition. As far as I know, my 1997 Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center On Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose International Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions was the second such petition submitted under the United Nations 1503 Procedure. And hence my collegial connection to the Honorable Silis Muhammad.

But the connection goes a bit deeper. The Honorable Silis Muhammad is a man, a leader, ahead of his time, fighting for our liberation in the international arena with very little acknowledgement or support. Even today his work is under-appreciated in the various movements and I was guilty of overlooking Mr. Muhammad’s contributions to the reparations movement when I compiled this history of the modern reparations movement.

When a national/international forum entitled “Revitalizing the Reparations Movement” was convened at Chicago State University on Saturday, April 19, 2014, incredibly the Honorable Silis Muhammad was not there!

The exclusion of Mr. Muhammad’s work and legacy is unfair. I feel this same way about my own work, begun in earnest in 2003.

Like Mr. Muhammad, in the mid to late 1990’s, my focus was on the United Nations as an arena for the reparations struggle. However, Let us recall that in 1996 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations granted consultative status to the Rastafari Movement who were represented by Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges. In 1998, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges asked: “What is the responsibility of the nations to Africans in the diaspora with respect to the age-old quest for Repatriation?” Said the Rasses, “Our advice from that committee and from the UN Office of Human Rights . . .. was simple:

“The United Nations as an organization of states cannot at this time in any serious way entertain the issue of repatriation without the consent of the African states and the African Governments to which we want to go in Africa. So we were directed to seek the support of African governments with respect to the acquisition of land. And after that, the matter can be brought up again to the United Nations and the issue of [settlement] can take place.” 

As a young, devout Rastafari youth, I then switched my focus to repatriation and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 2003, I went to Ethiopia, and as a credentialed journalist for the Rastafari Speaks newspaper, attended the 1st Extra-Ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa. It so happened that, like Malcolm X at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964, I was the only Afrodescendant at the African Union when the decision was made to invite and encourage the African Diaspora in the African Union through the Article 3q amendment that was adopted while I was there. As the de facto representative of the Afrodescendants at this pivoral moment in history, I felt a deep sence of responsibility and obligation. Ultimately, I became the Director of the African Union 6th Region Education Campaign, working in this new arena of the African Union. At the time as well as now, much of my work went unreported and thus, un-recognized. It was my job to make the importance of the new AU 6th Region known and elevate the struggle to have Afrodescedants’ Right to Return to their ancestral homelands recognized.

So at the time that Silis Muhammad was championing the cause of Afrodescendants at the United Nations, I was championing the cause at the African Union.

It is no coincednce that at this next pivotal moment in our history, when Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore and the Alliance of Sahel States is leading the fight against neocolonialism and imperialism in Africa, that the Afrodescendant Nation led by the Honorable Silis Muhammad and myself are playing key leadership roles in the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré In the West Delegation. Some things are just a matter of destiny.

Oral Statement to the Forum on Minority Issues, First Session,
Agenda Item VI: The Relationship Between Desegregation Strategies,
Cultural Autonomy and Integration in the Quest for Social Cohesion, December 2008

Greetings Madam Chair, Madam Gay McDougall, Experts, Country Representatives, Scholars and Minorities:

One of the purposes of this Forum is the identification of challenges and problems facing minorities and States. We, Afrodescendants, want for ourselves and for our children an education, especially now at our inception as an internationally recognized human family. We want an education in our original (mother) tongue. UN scholars state that language, not just any language, but one's "mother tongue" is intimately bound with identity. Thus, the right to such an education is an identity right.

Article 1, Section 1.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Minorities indicates States shall protect and promote the identity of minorities. The United States of America, mainly, as well as other States, have breached this United Nations obligation. Since the abolition of slavery until now, Afrodescendants have been denied self-identity: education in our mother tongue. It is the very dignity we are without. The former slave-holding States have a duty to protect not only the existence but the national, ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of Minorities.

Mr. M. Cherif Bassiouni stated, in his final report to the 56th session of the Commission on Human Rights, that economic compensation for victims of gross violations of human rights should be provided for any assessable damage resulting from violations of international human rights and humanitarian law: (b) lost opportunities, including education. Since we were forcibly deprived of our mother tongue due to slavery and its lingering effects, we want compensation from those States, especially the United States, responsible for denying us an education intimately bound with identity. Afrodescendants claim the right to compensation for violations of international law, articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities as well as Article 27 of the ICCPR, due to lost opportunities, including education.

In conclusion, we suggest that the regional forums for Afrodescendants, started under the auspices of the former Working Group on Minorities, be continued so that Afrodescendants can discuss practical, acceptable and adaptable solutions to the unique problems we face.

Thank you.

Mr. Silis Muhammad

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA 2014

President Barack Obama/President of the United States,

U.S. Congress, General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chief of Staff and The Pope of Rome

Silis Muhammad

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

THE LOST-FOUND NATION OF ISLAM

TO: President Barack Obama, President of the United States

U.S. Congress

General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chief of Staff

Pope of Rome

FROM: Silis Muhammad

RE: THE BLUEPRINT: OUR PLAN FOR AMERICA AND ITS AFRODESCENDANTS

DATE: January 15, 2014

The peoples and Governments of the world are well aware of the duplicity of the United States Government as it calls for Human Rights and democracy while continuing, to this day, systematic discrimination against and disenfranchisement of its Afrodescendant population--the inheritors of the legacy of plantation slavery (the so-called African Americans). While we recognize that moral leadership is the tone that the United States Government wishes to convey to the world, it as failed to take the key moral action that would begin to repair the ongoing wrong that has existed since the very inception of this government. Does anyone recognize the significance of this key to peace?

I am Silis Muhammad, Chief Executive Officer of the Lost-found Nation of Islam. If we could summon the hatred our ancestors had for this Caucasian American Government and bring that condition to bear on the shoulders of this generation of Afrodescendants the resulting wrath would be like unto a blaze of fire, the size of which would engulf the United States. It would burn for 1,000 years! The evil done to the Black man by the American government far surpasses the evil done by any other Government, especially the Governments of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Canada.

We are determined to leave America, not less than 144,000 of us, Arfodescendants. We, the children of plantation slavery, were subsumed by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America, which does not, in the least, express our will. We want no part of the prophesied imminent doom of America.

We want the United States, in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, to arrange for forgiveness of all debts owed by St. Kitts and all other members of CARICOM, who would welcome, with full citizenship, appropriate numbers of educated and industrious Afrodescendants from the United States. We are asking for sea-going and air-going ships or vessels and freeway, highway, bridge, and road building materials and equipment. We are asking for equipment to cultivate land. We need materials and machinery with which to make clothing, shoes, and furniture and we need materials and equipment to for putting in infrastructure. We want housing, apartments, and multi-story building materials and equipment. In addition, we ask for the cost of a one-way ticket to whatever islands that would accept us as full citizens. Whether the Government of America will or will not give this, we, not less than 144,000 of us, are determined to leave America and live amongst our own kind.

The American Government gives billions of dollars to Israel each year. It has committed to giving Haiti $20-million per year for the next four years, for food. In addition, she gives to Haiti and other countries her surplus old clothing, foods, and machinery. Will she give to her ex-plantation slave children our request of her? Abraham Lincoln stated, "keep them here as our underlings."

We, today, observe daily that we are treated and kept as underlings here in America. The images of how we are looked upon by this Caucasian American Government are yet on our minds and in our lives today.

The killing of Travon Martin in 2013 is a prime example, of which the world is well aware. Yet, perhaps the greatest example of the systematic immorality of the United States Government is her claim to the largest prison population in the world--prisons filled with Black men and women due to discriminatory policing, prosecution, and laws. There is no justice here. We are subjected to an ongoing slavery system--slavery by another name. The world can see that you are not our brothers and neither are we yours.

The ex-slave masters of the CARICOM countries have departed and left the Governments in the hands of their ex-slaves. What has this American Government given to her plantation slave children besides a subservient position as her underlings?

Psychiatrists and those in other related sciences say if a husband hits or beats his wife, his wife is to leave him immediately. Has the American government not done far worse to us, Afrodescendants? We have been whipped until blood gushed from our backs, boiled while yet alive until dead, and hung from trees: to say nothing of the cruelest of inhumane treatments. The loss of our mother tongue, culture, and religion renders us a spiritually dead nation. . These are losses of Human Rights as defined by Article 27 of the ICCPR of the United Nations.

We, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, have been in the International community since 1989. Our first written statement to the U.N. was in 1993. Our first oral statement to the U.N. was in 1998. Our last statement and appearance in the U.N. was in 2006. We spoke to the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and the Working Group on Minorities and had significantly gained their attention. But the American Government along with the British Government , the Governments of all slave-holding countries and other countries whom Britain and America provide support, shut down the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and the Working Group on Minorities--every U.N. group whose attention we had gained. In its place, they created the Human Rights Council.

We spent nine years in the U.N. only to learn that we did not exist as a Nation of people, with God-given human rights. As Americans, we were classified along with Caucasian Americans in the United States. We had achieved a unified name and identity that Black people from 19 countries agreed upon, in 2002--Afrodescendants. God-given Human Rights are: the right to speak your own mother tongue in community with others who speak your mother tongue; the right to practice your own culture in community with others who practice your culture; and the right to practice your own religion in community with others who practice your religion Our Human Rights were lost during plantation slavery. This American government made us a debased people. This is why this letter is presented to the President of the United States and the United States Government. We are determined to achieve ethnogenesis.

The following is a statement of American history. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote "The Truth Behind 40 Acres and a Mule," on pbs.org's '100 Amazing facts About The Negro'.

January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, upon approval of President Lincoln: "The islands from Charleston, South Carolina, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negros now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States (Abraham Lincoln).

400,000 acres of land--a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. Johns River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles from the coast--would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves.

For the first time in the history of this nation, the representatives of the Government had gone to these poor debased people to ask them what they wanted for themselves.

Baptist minister Ulysses L. Houston, one of the group that had met with Sherman led 1,000 Blacks to Skidaway Island, Georgia where they established a self-governing community with Houston as the "Black governor." And by June, 40,000 freedmen had settled on 400,000 acres of "Sherman Land." By the way, Sherman later ordered that the army could lend the new settlers mules; hence the phrase "40 acres and a mule."

What happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. goes on to say:

Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and, as Barton Myers sadly concluded, 'returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it--to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.'

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, along with 450,000 followers, from 1960 until the day of his death in 1975, repeatedly asked this Government to establish a state or territory of our own. The American Government turned a deaf ear. Is there not a moral-minded Caucasian in America's Government today? In 1865, we have in evidence at least two moral-minded statesmen: the United States President, Abe Lincoln, and General Sherman. They, at least, possessed enough moral insight to inquire of the new allegedly free Blacks what it is they wanted: "To live scattered amongst Whites or to live separate?" "Land" was the Black soon-to-be governors answer. Moreover, the Black soon-to-be governor stated, "there is a prejudice against us in the South. We would rather live in a separate territory." To date, the majority of Black people everywhere in the United States still experience this prejudice.

Is the Government of the United States incapable of the moral fortitude that it would take to grant to not less than 144,000 souls our humble request? Is there not one white man in the Government today, who has the wisdom, moral fortitude, and leadership ability of General Sherman and Abraham Lincoln? Ease the souls of my people, as well as make clean the souls of white people, by correcting your nation's wrongs. You claim that your nation has has changed, but our lawyers, doctors, teachers, and people feel your nation's prejudices even today.

To quote my daughter, Amira Arshad Muhammad, who is an attorney: "We are the peace that the world has been waiting for." You know what is right to do; just do it. Nature equips you from birth with the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. You know more about our history than the majority of us do, for it was your government that placed us in plantation slavery, debased us, and made us your underlings. Men and governments advance in age and in wisdom. Has your government advanced in wisdom, or does it lag behind?

______________________________________

Silis Muhammad

Servant of Allah

BELOW, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, ARE MY COMPILED “BEST HITS” OF THE HONORABLE SILAS MUHAMMAD

The 1503 Petition for Reparations for African Americans was delivered to the UN in 1994

“Understanding that to be a people, a group of persons must not only subjectively see themselves as a single people, but also objectively be seen, through speech and action, to be participating or be able to participate in the creation or recreation of their own distinct social world. . . . And further recognizing that for the many African-Americans whose ancestors were victims of gross violations, passage of time has no attenuating effect, but on the contrary has increased post-traumatic stress, deteriorated social, material, etc., conditions requiring all necessary special rights as well as compensation and rehabilitation measures. We may conclude that as long as the effects of past gross violation and resulting damage can be demonstrated as the cause of present developmental problems, it would be difficult to produce an acceptable argument for statutory limitations since that would amount to the denial of the fundamental human right to a remedy for past injustices. Therefore, in concern for future generations and our search for an end to war and violence, we must uphold human rights for African-Americans, because in this era of scattered low-intensity violent conflicts, only justice can effectively supersede war. . . . The use of African names and African languages was widely prohibited. The official U.S. policy of forced assimilation (referred to in the U.S. as "integration," despite its incongruousness with customary usage of that term) actually began during the enslavement period with the concerted efforts to stamp out any use or recognition of the African cultural heritage in America. This aspect of official policy was to be sufficiently successful in the areas of language and religion as to produce, from the many African cultures, a new one: African-Americans. . . . That this struggle is finally reaching its culminating stages is evidenced by the submission of this Petition to the United Nations, which constitutes the African-American demand for international inquiry into its long history of gross human rights violations, and remedy in the form of self-determination, reparations, and institution of minority rights, which given the historical precedents, may require significant degree of (internal) self-determination. . . . Individual manifestations of the general phenomenon will continue as confirmation of the general disrespect for the human rights of the formerly enslaved minority, until the phenomenon itself can be eliminated or neutralized--which cannot occur, The Nation of Islam feels and historical evidence substantiates (see Appendix H), until African-Americans are able to exercise their right to self-determination and receive reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations. The Nation of Islam and most African-Americans believe that this will require third party intervention, such as the U.N. Sub-Commission’s willingness to provide the political, legal and conceptual leverage, the fora and the legal framework required by the oppressed formerly enslaved minority to convince the U.S. government to open a sincere dialogue on the inalienable human rights of the minority to lawfully demand self-determination with reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations--chiefly, the receipt of compensation for past and on-going gross violation to the full extent necessary to achieve self-determination and minority rights as provided by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified. . . . Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission:

The U.S. government, in line with the U.S. Courts, continues to promote forced assimilation through the concept that all minority needs and rights can be subsumed within the concept of non-discrimination and equality (or sameness) before the law--this despite the fact that historical evidence strongly contradicts such a notion, and that judicial enforcement of non-discrimination in the U.S. has become formal and de-contextualized, disallowing appropriate consideration for historical injustices and present special needs. The courts further restrict satisfaction by requiring "intent to discriminate," and refusing consideration to those who are not "immediate victims". . . . All statistical evidence (Appendix H) indicates that a policy of non-discrimination alone is insufficient to permit the African-American minority to achieve equal status with the majority, but rather, under the guise of aiding them, serves to continue their victimization. While a multi-national state may argue that treating all people (majority as well as formerly enslaved minority) the same, legally and institutionally, regardless of their different histories and circumstances, somehow leads to a new society in which oppressed or formerly enslaved minorities, at some time in the future, will achieve equal-status, sameness or equality with the majority, this line of reasoning more frequently serves merely to justify or mask majority domination, and often exploitation, of national minorities. Even the most superficial analysis reveals that treating such minorities as if they were the same as the majority in a majority-ruled multi-national society does not permit minority needs to be legitimately known or expressed, let alone addressed. . . . The U.S. government should not be given the tacit approval of the U.N. to continue to ignore past gross violations without compensation, nor to continue present gross violations against its national minorities. Surely, Members of the Sub-Commission, it is not your position nor that of the U.N., while situated in New York and surrounded by more than one million oppressed national minority members, to ignore their desperate plight, and at the same time assist U.S. human rights efforts in other countries. Surely, Mr. Secretary General and Sub-Commission Members, your position and that of the U.N. cannot be that in the U.S. only "white Americans" have internationally protected human rights, and that what is done to African-Americans does not count. . . . The African-American people do not believe that an honest, truly useful and equitable solution can be achieved without a significant degree of U. N. assistance. African-American history is filled with attempts at trying to achieve a sincere dialogue with the majority Government. All attempts to achieve domestic remedies have failed. In 400 years, African-Americans have not even come close to achieving equal-status relations with the Anglo-American majority ethnarchy which controls and runs the U.S. government as it sees fit, claims and distributes socio-economic resources as it sees fit, and ignores the human rights of African-Americans when it sees fit, etc. Now African-Americans want their human rights, demands for equal status, self determination, and compensation for past and on-going gross violations to be heard and redressed, and are requesting U.N. assistance. . . . If the U.S. government is sincere about dealing honestly and candidly with human rights problems of its African-American population, then it should not object to this time-honored process of third party (U.N.) assistance, mediation, conciliation or arbitration.”

Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
August 1998, 50th Session, Agenda Item 2

Our issue is the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. When we consider Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified, we conclude that we, the descendants of slaves (the so-called African-Americans), remain a lost people. We are dislodged from the knowledge of our cultural beginning. We remain dislodged from the knowledge of our ancestral tradition of religion. Regarding our language, as slaves we were by force prevented from speaking it, and we are lost still from the use of it. . . . My presence here is axiomatic of unfolding history. A potential holocaust is today on the horizon, particularly, in the United States of America. Will the United Nations persuade her to let my people go?

Written Statement to the Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities 50th Session, August 1998, Agenda item 2: Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including policies of racial discrimination and segregation and of apartheid, in all countries, with particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and territories: report of the Sub-Commission under Commission on Human Rights resolution 8 (XXIII)

Recognizing that the Sub-Commission Resolution refers to plantation slavery not only in the U.S.A., but in the Americas, we ask that the Sub-Commission be conscious of the fact that African-Americans are in a unique position among Africans in the Diaspora. African-Americans did not receive the benefits of a partial or full return to self-determination or self government which began to be enjoyed by Africans throughout the Diaspora as a result of the movement towards de-colonization in the 1960's. To the contrary, in the 1960's assimilation was further forced upon the African-Americans through a civil rights movement which caused the demise of whatever independent economic and cultural recovery they had been able to achieve during the years of segregation. For those who would argue that the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. was the will of African-Americans, it should be pointed out that an equally powerful movement toward human rights and self-determination took place at the same time. . . Every effort was made by the U.S. Government to destroy the independent spirit that was generated . . . . so-called African-Americans have suffered utter and complete destruction of their culture, language, ethnic identity, and religion. For them the United Nations protection offered to Minorities is meaningless. Because of the particular cruelty of chattel slavery in the United States, so-called African-Americans were able to retain nothing of their past and of their homelands. Hence, the truth arises… that unlike some of the Africans in the Diaspora, who do retain remnants of their original culture and identity, African-Americans possess no remnants, and therefore must build their future from nothing but their own will to survive slavery. Thus the vast majority are in the condition of a lost people whose assimilation has been so complete that they cannot identify what they suffer from. [Siphiwe note: by the miracle of African Ancestry DNA testing, now they can identify their direct maternal and paternal ancestry, who and where they come from in Africa.] . . . We believe that if the U.N. will establish a forum for African-Americans in the United States, through that act alone African-Americans will begin to fully understand that the Nations of the earth wish to help them recapture their rights as human beings. We believe that by doing this, an upcoming race war, or racial violence may be averted.”

Oral Statement to the Working Group on Minorities, Fourth Session, May 1998
Agenda Item 3 (b) Examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities
including the promotion of mutual understanding between and among minorities and Governments

“Our question is whether the national minority, the so-called African- Americans, are in possession of their inalienable human rights. . . . Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America has ratified, states, "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language." Here, the so-called African-Americans are not in possession of their human rights. They were taken away from the culture of their origin. The slave ship took them from their place of beginning, as you scholars well do know. The slave master did not return them to their culture, nor did he bring their culture and teach it to them. Nor has the American government, to date, sought to teach them their culture, or return them to it. They are absent the knowledge of their cultural beginning. The slave ship took them away from their ancestral religious belief. They were dislodged from the knowledge of their lineage to . . . God. The slave master taught them of his religion ultimately, and of his lineage to a supreme being whom he refers. to by the name of God. The federal or local governments of America did not teach nor make provisions for the so-called African-American, or slaves, to learn the knowledge of their transmissible religious belief. They are absent the knowledge of their ancestral tradition of religion. Regarding their original language, there were not any provisions set in motion by the local and federal governments of America for them to cultivate and continue speaking their language. To the contrary, provisions were set in motion to prevent them from speaking their language, originally. They were intentionally separated from one another, with total disregard, during slavery such that they would not be able to speak their language. Ultimately, they lost the knowledge of it. Thus, to the extent that they were deprived of their culture, their religion and their language, they are not in possession of their human rights. Moreover, to the extent that they, especially during the period of chattel slavery, were constrained by the laws, the culture, the religion and the language of the Anglo-American, they lived, and to this day live, under a tyrannical government. By the acts of forced assimilation the Anglo-American has sought also to subsume the so-called African-American into its Constitution. The human rights, the desires and the perpetual existence of the national minority are not embodied in the majority Constitution: which, from its origin, is absent any input of the national minority. The laws arising from America's majority Constitution do not embody the living will of the national minority. Thus, we feel we cannot intelligently argue the issue of (a) violation of our human rights. While we are human, we have not been in possession of (our) human rights for the past 433 years. Our human rights were willfully destroyed, utterly. They were destroyed by the slave masters, under the auspices of the United States central and local governments, during our long sojourn as slaves in America.”

Written Statement to the 54th Session of the Commission on Human Rights
Provisional Agenda item 14, Specific Groups and Individuals (b) Minorities
March/April 1998

“Understanding that the most destructive violation of the human rights of African Americans remains ethnocide and forced assimilation into an alien culture: despite the attempts of American media to portray "happy American blacks" and "wealthy black athletes" the culture of the majority of African Americans is a post slavery culture. Many African Americans have long sought a separate identity, and they have long sought to distinguish themselves from the majority population through unique musical and cultural development. Some African Americans have tried to identify with the African continent and have found that their long absence and forced removal has made them unable to re-connect. African Americans are, in essence, a homeless nation without identity, exploited as a servant class. Increasingly they are being forced into criminal or suspect status. . . . Our organization is concerned with the protection of the human rights of the African National Minority in the U.S.A. We encourage awareness of the potential for racial conflict and violent suppression of those who are seeking independence and reparations.”

Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discriminationand the Protection of Minorities, August, 1999 Provisional Agenda Item 8: Prevention of discrimination against and the protection of minorities

“We charge civil death. The U.S., with knowledge that it has denied us our identity for the past 400 years, is in violation of both the aforementioned Covenant and Declaration. In articles 2 and 4, the Declaration stipulates that minorities have the right to protect their culture and identity. . . . Owing to plantation slavery, intercultural education is an impossibility for us. By forcibly depriving us of our "mother tongue," the Government of the U.S. deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need specific U.N. assistance. Absent knowledge of our mother tongue, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community, and preserve our individual identity? The annihilation of our "mother tongue" is the extermination of our identity. Absent our identity, we do not have our own culture. Absent culture, we are in a state of civil death. To destroy a people and their shared life is a crime. The U.N. can provide a remedy by establishing a forum for so-called African-Americans at the U.N. in New York. We want a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights -- which only we can reclaim or choose. Within a forum, we will 1) rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves; 2) openly discuss the devolution, in pertinent parts, of the Constitution of the U.S., which defines us as three-fifth of a human being; 3) make choices on the "mother tongue" or tongues we wish to speak; 4) discuss and conclude on the issues of reclamation, restoration, reparations and migration of some of us to a friendly nation; 5) then present this package to the U.N. in order that the U.N. can facilitate dialogue between us and the U.S. Government. The forum will provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.”

Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation Meets with the President of the Commission for the Alliance of Sahel States

Delegation leader Mmoja Ajabu and Mr. Bassaloma Bazie, President of the Commission of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)

Ouagadougou, June 27 - After meeting with H.E. Karamokio Traoré, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Burkina Faso and appearing on National TV yesterday, The Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation met with Mr. Bassaloma Bazie, President of the Commission of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), to discuss the solidarity between Afrodescendants and the people of the Sahel region.

The delegation emphasized the support from Afrodescendant people for the AES, which recognizes it as the leading force towards a United African States. For his part, President Bazie acknowledged that the Afrodescendant people and the support of the Pan African movement globally, in response to former US Africom Commander Michael Langley’s comments targeting President Ibrahom Traoré provided a “shield” which effectively protected President Traoré from assasination. President Bazie expressed deep appreciation for this and instructed Afrodescendants to consider themselves “citizens” of Burkina Faso and that the most important passport is the one that exists in the “heart”.

The delegation extended an invitation to the President of the Commission of AES to address the Afrodescendants during the July 4 live broadcast that will feature prominent Pan African leaders from around the world.

Special Envoy Siphiwe Baleka and President of the Commission of the AES Mr. Bassolma Bazie wearing the Pan African Alliance pin gifted by the delegation.

Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation Begins Successful Mission in Burkina Faso

Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation: (back row from left to right) Baba Mukasa Dada, Dr. Tauheedah Bronner, Mmoja Ajabu, Siphiwe Baleka, Rashan Muhammad. (front row) Maimuna Dada, Olimatta Taal, Harriet AbuBakr Photo credit: Olimatta Taal

Ougadougou, June 26 - The Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation (FPITW) held a press conference in the capital city of Burkina Faso to explain its mission. Following the press conference, the delegation then met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Karamoko Traoré.

Special Envoy Siphiwe Baleka effectively linked the Afrodescendants’ self determination struggle in the Americas with the same struggle against neocolonialism in Africa and particularly in the Sahel region where Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have formed the Alliance of Sahel States. The delegation has invited President Traoré to speak to the 250 million Afrodescendants in the African Diaspora during the July 4 Black Summer 2025 event.

Following the press conference, the delegation had a successful meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Karamoko Jean Marie Traoré who stated that the next step is the preparation of a broad framework for FPITW engagement in Burkina Faso. FPITW is now seeking to establish a headquarters to serve as an Embassy for Afrodescendants and Pan Afrikans coming to the country from the West. According to Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz, “FRIENDS OF PRESIDENT TRAORE IN THE WEST was founded to solidify support in the West for the complete liberation of Africa through supporting Burkina Faso and its innovative pursuit for independence.”

Watch the full press conference:

LETTERS OF SUPPORT