Appendix 3 : Opening speech
of the Director-General of Unesco
Mr Minister,
Excellency,
Ladies and Gentlemen,First of all I wish to express my deep gratitude to the Government of the Haitian
Republic for its kindness in hosting this meeting of experts in connection with the
General History of Africa project. I also wish very sincerely to thank Mr Raoul
Pierre-Louis, Secretary of State for Education, for his personal co-operation in the
preparation of this meeting and for the important address that he has just delivered.
I am grateful to him for having so affectionately welcomed the Haitian lady who has
shared my life and efforts for more than twenty-five years. This is the first time that
Unesco has organized a meeting on this important project concerning the history of
Africa outside the African continent. It was right that it should be held in Haiti. But
the occasion has above all a special significance by the very reason of the topic of your
discussion, the question of the slave trade. For Haiti remains a living symbol of both
the sufferings and the heroic struggles of the black slaves uprooted from their African
soil but never resigned to their fate. Their victorious action made possible for the
first time in the history of mankind the establishment, out of the ruins of a slave
society, of a State based on the right to individual freedom.
While the slave trade determined the future of the communities resulting from
the African diaspora which today form the population of many Latin American and
Caribbean areas, it also left a very deep imprint on the history of Africa. This means
that the results of the work of this meeting will be very important for the project on
the General History of Africa, the drafting of which has been entrusted by Unesco to
an international scientific committee composed of specialists from Africa and all the
other regions of the world. I have pleasure today in welcoming a number of its mem-
bers here present.
To further its work the committee recommended the holding of just such
meetings of experts, colloquia and seminars on certain vital topics such as that for
which we are convened today.
There are five main items on the agenda for your discussion. The first is the
scale of the slave trade. In the study of this subject, comparisons of the different
methods employed should enable more precise statistical data to be evolved.
Following on this quantitative approach, you are called upon to discuss in
substance the demographic, political, economic, social and cultural consequences of