Baku, which has increasingly become a center for global decolonization dialogues, will host an international thematic conference titled “Towards the Decolonization of Guadeloupe! Challenges and Perspectives”, dedicated to the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe still under colonial rule, News.Az reports.
The conference will take place tomorrow and is jointly organized by the Baku Initiative Group (BIG), the People's Union for the Liberation of Guadeloupe (UPLG), the Guadeloupe International Movement for Reparations (MIR-Guadeloupe), the International Committee of Black Peoples (CIPN), and the Movement for the Emergence of the Guadeloupean Nation (FKNG).
The event will bring together leaders of political parties fighting for Guadeloupe’s independence, heads of movements, representatives of NGOs, academics, and other stakeholders. The Secretary of the International Decolonization Front, founded in Baku in July 2024 with the support of the Baku Initiative Group, is also expected to deliver a keynote address.
Key topics of the conference will include the implications of Guadeloupe’s continued status as a French overseas department, which restricts the island’s right to self-determination, as well as colonial crimes, historical injustices, the extermination of the indigenous Kalinago people, labor exploitation, and the persistence of administrative and economic structures that perpetuate inequality and dependency. Discussions will also focus on how the department status sustains colonialism, contributing to unemployment, mass youth emigration, social inequality, economic dependence, violence, environmental degradation, and the devastating effects of the toxic pesticide chlordecone.
The conference aims to highlight Guadeloupe’s right to self-determination on the international agenda and to examine the non-compliance by France with UN resolutions and declarations on granting independence to colonized peoples, as well as the relevant legal mechanisms established by the United Nations.
