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Bachelet highlights outstanding debts with black Latin Americans

San Jose, Dec 3 (EFE-EPA) .- The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, spoke up Tuesday on the outstanding debt Latin American has with black women, who have been "invisible" and "culturally discriminated against."(CAMERA: Douglas Marín) SOUNDBITES FROM THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, MICHELLE BACHELET, AND THE VICE PRESIDENT OF COSTA RICA, EPSY CAMPBELLMICHELLE BACHELET: "During the last decade, our region has witnessed unprecedented growth in the number of women in positions of power. It is not enough, but it is an important growth. Despite this growth, the political presence of women in Decision-making positions remains low if we consider that women represent 50 percent of the population, and even more worrying is that in this process of the feminization of democracy in Latin America, it has not benefited all equally. An insufficient number of indigenous and Afro-descendant women have managed to reach positions of decision-making, public office and be part of the lists of political parties, that number is unable to reflect the demographic weight of Afro-descendant women in our countries. Invisibility of Afro-descendant women in decision-making strata is a consequence of Structural discrimination in our Latin American societies. Discrimination against access to quality education, higher education, health services, decent work, and salary. This lack of access to human rights is the reflection of even more complex and pernicious discrimination created by the intersection between gender, skin color, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. "EPSY CAMPBELL: "Afro-descendant women, as you know, face an absolutely complex reality with a proven disadvantage with respect to the general population and women in particular. In the whole region, this situation is observed with higher unemployment rates, with less access to productive resources, with structural and institutional violence, in access to health, housing, and general well-being. I turned out to be the first Afro-descendant woman vice president of the continent, several of you have turn out to be the first to open the doors, historically those issues have to stay in the past, it has to be normal for Afro-descendant women, indigenous women, rural women to participate actively in decision-making at national and international level. Today our representation in public and political life throughout the region is absolutely symbolic, and it is insignificant if we take as a reference that in the American continent and the Caribbean 200 million people of African descent live here, we represent a third of the population of this region."