A/HRC/42/59/Add.1 with officials from the city of Namur and representatives of the municipal authorities of Charleroi. In all the cities that the Working Group visited, it met with people of African descent, and with human rights activists, lawyers, academics and representatives of nongovernmental organizations. 6. The Working Group thanks the Government of Belgium for its invitation and the authorities in Brussels, Antwerp, Liège, Namur and Charleroi for their support and cooperation during the visit. The Working Group thanks the Federal Public Service for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. The Working Group also thanks the Regional Office for Europe of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for its support for the visit. The Working Group expresses its appreciation to the People of African Descent of Belgium civil society committee for coordinating meetings with people of African descent in different parts of the country. The Working Group thanks the many people of African descent and others that its delegation met during the visit, including representatives of civil society organizations and of women’s organizations, and human rights defenders, lawyers and academics. II. Background: historical overview and current context 7. Belgium is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy. From its establishment in 1831, it has evolved from a unitary State into a federal State, composed of communities and regions. The distribution of power is based essentially on a transfer of the jurisdiction exercised by the federal authorities – both ratione materiae and ratione loci – to the communities and the regions. The communities and regions are not subordinate entities, as the provinces and municipalities are; rather, they have the same standing as the federal authority within their jurisdictional competencies, since their legislation, in the form of decrees and ordinances, has equal force in law. The federal authority has jurisdiction over matters for which it is explicitly assigned responsibility by the Constitution and the law and over matters not expressly conferred on the communities and regions. 8. The history of Belgium, and in particular the legacy of King Leopold II’s colonial exploitations and atrocities in Africa, continue to haunt people of African descent today. Many Belgian citizens of non-African descent are also haunted by these past atrocities and their continuing impact on Belgian society. At the Berlin conference held in 1884 and 1885, the European powers allocated the Congo basin region to a private charitable organization run by Leopold II. The boom in demand for natural rubber, which was abundant in the territory, created a radical shift in the 1890s to facilitate its extraction and export. All “uninhabited” land in what was then the Congo Free State was seized by the colonial authority, with the majority distributed to private companies as concessions, although some concessions were kept by the State. From 1891 to 1906, the companies were allowed to act with impunity, with almost no governmental supervision or judicial interference. As a result, forced labour and violent coercion were used to collect rubber cheaply and maximize profit. A paramilitary army, the Force Publique, was created to enforce exploitative labour policies. Individuals who refused to participate in rubber collection could be killed, and entire villages were razed under colour of law and without fear of accountability. Many Congolese men were forced to extract rubber under the threat of extreme violence, and their wives, children and other family members were forced into camps if they refused. Individual white administrators were free to indulge their personal sadism with impunity. The severing of workers’ hands achieved international notoriety. It is believed that 17 to 25 million Congolese persons were killed by colonial agents and authorities during the colonial period. 9. Details of the atrocities committed against the Congolese people were recorded by Christian missionaries, leading to public outrage when they were made known to the public in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the United States of America and elsewhere. An international campaign against the Congo Free State began in 1890 and reached its peak after 1900 under the leadership of the British activist Edmund D. Morel. In 1908, international pressure forced the Government of Belgium to annex the Congo Free 3