A/HRC/28/81 minorities. He emphasized that laws themselves were insufficient, and, based on his experience, there needed to be a broader embracing of the principle of anti-discrimination. Given the present day challenges faced by African-Americans as evidenced in the recent situation in Ferguson, Missouri, he stated that there remained significant challenges and problems to be addressed, in spite of there being legislation in place. He stated that the fight against racial discrimination could not be won by lawyers but rather by politicians, and gave the example of Gandhi and Mandela, who despite being lawyers, were politicians who believed in equality and justice. According to Mr. Shaw, the backlash against affirmative action measures has been due to racial discrimination and the inability of people to deal with a long legacy of racism and to speak about it, by trying to leave it behind, including by ignoring what is an unpleasant part of a country’s history. It is also a challenge to maintain affirmative action policies and programmes, as opportunity was often seen as a zero sum game. In conclusion, he gave a brief account of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund had become the model for legal defence groups worldwide from its early days in the fight against racial discrimination. 59. At the 8th meeting on 10 October, Ms. Elisa Alonso Monçores, Researcher at the Instituto de Economia/UFRJ in Brazil gave a presentation on “Affirmative actions in Brazil: Recent experience and social indicators”. The expert noted that her data stemmed from LAESER, a research group of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), working on race relations in Brazil (www.laeser.ie.ufrj.br). 60. She noted that Brazil had the second largest population of people of African descent in the world (after Nigeria) and the biggest ”Afrodescendiente” population in the Americas. In the 2010 national census, 96.8 million Brazilians self-declared themselves as “Afrodescendientes”, representing 50,7 per cent of the total population. Brazil’s affirmative action policies were focused on the educational sector and access to public universities. She noted that over a period of time, the country’s illiteracy rate had steadily declined; nevertheless, the comparative rates of illiteracy for “Afrodescendants” and whites remained highly unequal. In recent decades, there had been a pronounced increase in the average years of education for both people of African descent and the white population. 61. Ms. Monçores pointed out that generally there were more white students in private and public universities and at private schools. Private schools were considered of higher quality, whereas public universities were perceived as offering the best education. In 2013, statistics highlighted that 89.3 per cent of young “Afrodescendants” (between 18-24) were not attending university. 62. The expert explained that Law No. 12,711/2012, adopted in August of 2012 was the basis for affirmative action policies in Brazil. She noted that fifty per cent of all student slots at the public universities were reserved for people of African descent, and the remaining fifty per cent were subject to competition. This corresponded to the latest census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). She added that as yet there was no affirmative action law with respect to the labour market. Draft Law 6783/13 had passed the House of Representatives on March 26th 2014 and was still pending in the Senate, reserving twenty per cent of public service posts for people of African descent. This Law would not apply to the legislature and the judiciary. 63. During the interactive discussion, the representative of Italy noted that the data presented by the expert did not indicate specific reasons for discrimination, as the discrimination and inequalities in access to university education could be attributed to race as well as to other socio-economic factors. The delegate inquired whether affirmative action policies of the State applied to poor white people in Brazil, and highlighted the problems faced by some European countries in the collection of disaggregated data. 35