A/HRC/42/59/Add.1 allow for the involvement of various Belgian institutions in the colonization of Burundi, the Congo and Rwanda to be recognized, as proposed in a parliamentary motion dated 14 February 2017 (DOC 54 2307/001). 33. The most visible postcolonial discourse in a Belgian public institution is that taking place within the recently reopened Royal Museum for Central Africa, which is both a research and a cultural institution. The museum has sought to review its approach to include critical post-colonial analysis – which is a marked shift for an institution originally tasked with promulgating colonial propaganda. 34. The Working Group welcomes the recognition of the need to reform the museum and is of the view that the steps taken thus far to reorganize it and add new exhibits have not gone far enough. For those communities that engage in vibrant post-colonial discourse – including civil society, historians and activists of African descent – this reorganization falls short of its goal of providing adequate context and critical analysis. The Working Group notes the importance of removing all colonial propaganda and accurately presenting the atrocities of the colonial past of Belgium. The Royal Museum for Central Africa admits that decolonization is a process and states its intention to continue that process and evolve towards sharing power with people of African descent and relevant institutions. 35. The Working Group was informed by the Government of specific commemorations of people of African descent. In the park where 267 Congolese people were exhibited during the universal exhibition in Tervuren in 1897, a commemorative plaque is dedicated to them and to the 12 children who died having been brought to Belgium between 1891 and 1900 to be educated. A Congolese artist, Freddy Tsimba, created a work entitled “Ombres” (“Shadows”) in the Memorial Hall of the Royal Museum for Central Africa to commemorate the victims of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo. The names of the 7 Congolese people who died during the universal exhibition in Tervuren in 1897 and of the 12 children who died having been brought to Belgium between 1891 and 1900 are projected. Their names appear as shadows on the list of names of 1,508 Belgians who died in the Congo between 1876 and 1908. Mr. Tsimba’s statue “Centre fermé, rêve ouvert” (“Closed centre, open dream”), which stands against one of the museum’s walls, refers to the plight of immigrants in closed asylum centres in Europe. The Working Group welcomes this information, but notes the paucity of commemoration of the estimated 17–25 million Africans who died in the Congo at the hands of the colonial project, and observes that the colonial perspective that is still reflected throughout the museum vastly overwhelms the commemorations that exist for people of African descent. 36. The Afropea gallery in the Royal Museum for Central Africa was created with the purpose of displaying the history of the African presence in Belgium since the sixteenth century (the first portrait of an identified person of African descent in Europe was painted by Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp in 1521, and shows a young woman aged around 20 whom Dürer identified as Katherina, a servant of the representative of the King of Portugal in Antwerp) and of marking the contributions to Belgian Society of individuals of African descent. The gallery also commemorates those who were ill-treated (such as the “children of Save”, who were separated from their mothers and brought to Belgium between 1958 and 1962, and the Rwandan children brought to Belgium to be adopted during the 1980s in suspicious circumstances) and those who lost their lives due to racist actions or in tragic circumstances related to their situation as immigrants without official papers – in the RIP section of the gallery. As 2019 marks the centenary of the creation of the first African association in Belgium, the Union Congolaise, which has in the meantime become the Union Royale Congolaise, there are plans to celebrate this by organizing events together with the Union and by incorporating photographs and documents in the permanent exhibition in the Afropea gallery. The Working Group was informed by the Government that the gallery has been co-created and co-curated in close collaboration with individuals of African descent and African associations in Belgium. It is a participatory and interactive exhibition, which can quickly be updated if a person of African descent is in the news. The Working Group was informed that Belgian-Congolese musicians Marie Daulne and Ronny Mosuse, together with Italian-Belgian musician Fabrizio Cassol, had composed the song “Echo” for the museum choir, to apologize for the violence inflicted on Congolese people 9