The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent has sparked concern among civil rights advocates and international leaders, who say the move could undermine global progress on racial and reparative justice, as reported by TheGrio.
The withdrawal was included in an executive memorandum signed last week by President Donald Trump, formally pulling the U.S. out of 66 international organizations. Among them was the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, a body established by the UN General Assembly in 2021 to address the lasting impacts of colonialism and slavery on people of African descent worldwide.
Since first convening in 2022, the forum has served as a space for dialogue and policy development affecting Black communities globally, from more than 40 million African Americans in the United States to approximately 1.5 billion people across Africa and the broader diaspora.
“It was a space where Black people from all over the world could come and share their struggles, but also share their joy and see themselves in each other, even if they didn’t share the same language,” said Desirée Cormier Smith, founder and co-president of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice.
Cormier Smith previously served as the State Department’s first U.S. Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice under President Joe Biden. In that role, she advocated for U.S. support of the forum and co-led every American delegation to its annual meetings. She said the forum played a critical accountability role for governments. “From the government perspective, this space was needed because it forced governments, for at least one time of the year, to go on record about how they supported people of African descent,” she said.
Bishop Joseph Tolton, a Pan-African activist and president of Interconnected Justice, described the forum as a mechanism to unify global struggles. It helped communities “connect our struggles and create an apparatus to tell each other what our respective stories are, and then distill from that understanding and knowledge bank some action,” he said.
Victoria Kirby, director of public policy and programs at the National Black Justice Collective, called the forum a “story collector and documenter of the experiences of the Afro-diaspora across the globe,” noting that those records were “carefully” compiled to inform action by the UN and other governing bodies.
In just a few years, the forum laid the groundwork for discussions on global reparations,
including proposals for a UN declaration on the human rights of people of African descent. “That would lead to repair in ways that we’ve seen the United Nations and other global bodies do for other populations across the globe,” Kirby said.Following the withdrawal, the Trump administration accused the forum of promoting “victim-based social policies” and labeled it a “racist organization.” Advocates rejected that characterization, arguing the move reflects deeper hostility toward racial equity efforts.
“I don’t think any one of us would have wanted the Trump administration actively engaged… because it could have been nefarious and counterproductive,” Cormier Smith said. “However, there was no need to withdraw beyond it being racist clickbait for their base.”
Although advocates say the forum will continue its work without U.S. government participation, they warn the decision sends a
broader signal. Tolton said it creates a “permission structure” for other nations to resist reparative justice, citing Haiti as a vulnerable example. “If there is no reparatory justice in Haiti, how does Haiti ever rebuild or redevelop itself?” he asked.Global reparations strategist Gretchen Moore said the moment calls for long-term vision. “We need to be thinking 25 and 50 years from now,” she said, emphasizing that justice efforts must persist “no matter what administration, because administrations come and go.”
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