How Do You Think European Colonialism Affected The Makeup And The Status Of African Nations?
Centuries of European colonialism have had a tremendous impact on shaping inequities inside and among countries, many of which are yet to exist effectively addressed. This may seem similar a picayune statement, but it is only recently beingness recognised by EU countries.
In 2019, the European Parliament passed a Resolution on the Central Rights of People of African Descent. It called for a comprehensive perspective on colonialism and slavery, which recognises their historical and contemporary adverse furnishings on people of African descent.
Similarly, concluding year's ambitious anti-racism action plan for 2020-2025 declares that colonialism is embedded in European history and has profound consequences for guild today.
Even so, the EU has some way to get to fully recognise, let lonely address, the structural legacies of colonialism – for case, the racial dividing lines between white people and people of colour within the Eu. In all major areas of social club across the Eu, people of colour tend to be the most discriminated against. All the same, speaking of race and differences between white people and people of colour is non part of the political and legal discourse in the EU.
Sweden as a case study
Regarding Europe's dawning recognition of colonial legacies, Sweden is a case in point. After the 2nd world state of war information technology projected itself as a "moral superpower" without any of its ain issues with colonialism and racism. It was a champion for equal rights, global justice and solidarity.
From the early 1960s, it stood up against colonialism at the UN and actively supported anti-colonial struggles. It funded the ANC in South Africa.
Today, Sweden remains amongst the world's largest donors of development aid, despite beingness a relatively pocket-size country. Until recently, Sweden had the most generous access of refugees per capita in Europe. If nosotros are to believe the Good Country Alphabetize, there is no land in the earth that contributes more than to the mutual practiced of humanity than Sweden.
Simply Sweden has e'er participated in, benefited from and even contributed to the international racial divisions of colonialism. Between the commencement and second world wars, the Swedish parliament voted for the establishment of a land found for studying, promoting and conserving the race biology of the nation. The commonplace conception at the time was that ethnic Swedes belonged to a superior Nordic type of white Europeans.
Nor was Sweden a mere bystander to the racial ordering of globe affairs that began with European expansion during the late 15th century. It participated in the scramble for overseas colonies, holding onto the island of St Barthélemy in the Caribbean, for nearly a century. This became a meaning complimentary port where the treatment of enslaved Africans was no unlike than on neighbouring islands.
Today, people of non-European descent brand upwards roughly 15-xx% of the Swedish population, a segment of society that has much higher levels of unemployment than white Swedes. While the employment rate for native-born Swedes is close to 100%, for those born in Asia and Africa it is 55-60%.
The more educated you lot are as an African Swede, the larger the pay gap when set against other Swedes with the same educational attributes – and the more difficult it is to discover a job that matches your qualifications. Native-born African Swedes with a academy education make approximately 49% less than the residual of the population with similar qualifications.
These hierarchies in Swedish society are role of a global pattern that has come almost equally a event of a shared colonial history.
Addressing colonial legacies
Despite efforts in some respects, Sweden and other European countries exercise not properly recognise the many global inequities that are the legacy of colonialism. As the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, put it, colonialism still reverberates in social injustices, the global economy and international power relations.
Former colonial powers are refusing to give up their domination at the Un, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, for case. Many European nations have consistently opposed and ignored UN resolutions passed with overwhelming majority by the UN General Assembly and Human being Rights Council calling for a democratic and equitable international society.
This twelvemonth marks the 20th anniversary of the Globe Conference Against Racism in South Africa and the world's nearly comprehensive human rights musical instrument against racial discrimination. Among other things, this Durban Proclamation and Programme of Action calls for an terminate to the racial structures established by colonialism and for concerned states to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of the transatlantic slave trade.
The Uk, France and other European countries have opposed the implementation of the Durban Declaration – and Sweden has supported them. For example, on New Twelvemonth'southward Eve 2020 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution for a comprehensive implementation of the declaration, too endorsing the decision to establish a Un permanent forum on people of African descent. When put to a vote, 106 countries supported the resolution. But 14 voted against – among them the Britain, French republic and kingdom of the netherlands. Another 44 abstained, including Sweden.
Still, EU countries seem to be slowly coming around to recognising the global touch on of colonialism. In December 2020, the European Parliament held an inaugural European 24-hour interval for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In Sweden, a government agency is making efforts towards raising public sensation of Sweden'due south participation in the racialised order of European colonialism. That includes its colonisation of Europe's only recognised indigenous peoples, the Saami.
So far, no steps have been taken towards redress, but maybe we are witnessing the start of an honest reckoning of the by and its impacts on the present.
Source: https://theconversation.com/will-european-countries-ever-take-meaningful-steps-to-end-colonial-legacies-148581
Posted by: linseymarban.blogspot.com
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