Since 1992, Ishmael Abdul-Salaam has been engaged in international advocacy for Afrodescendants. He began working locally in Philadelphia, PA as a speaker and organizer for the National Commission for Reparations (NCR). Spearheading the National Reparations Summit under the NCR was an opportunity to coordinate with national and international leaders around the issues of Reparations and Self-Determination.

As a member of AFRE, Mr. Abdul-Salaam has engaged in the United Nations as a national guest, participated in the Millennium Forum in New York, delivered an intervention at the Working Group on Minorities in Geneva, and participated in United Nations workshops and seminars. Mr. Abdul-Salaam is a co-author of the Sub-Commission Conference Room Paper, “A Regional Perspective on Afrodescendant Quality of Life.”

Mr. Abdul-Salaam continues to observe development in the international arena through the United Nations as well as monitor and support national efforts to secure the human rights of Afrodescendants. As Chairman and CEO of AFRE, Mr. Abdul-Salaam will lead the organization’s engagement in the United Nations, facilitating the interventions of Afrodescendant leaders and building global partnerships that support the self-determination and human rights of the Afrodescendant People.   

And today, America is an independent nation isn't she? Flies her flag. Walks around the world holding herself as the world police. Doesn't she? But you haven't even policed your own inner shores, America. You are the biggest criminal in the history of the world - to steal a people from a land and to rape them, to take their language, to take their culture, to take their religion, and leave them in a state of civil death. You are the biggest criminal the world has ever known. So we who were brought here as slaves want to live again as a People. Some of us, one day, want to live as a Nation. Because I one day want my son to aspire to be a Senator, to be a Congressman, to possibly be the President of his own Nation. What about when Shabazz is building cars in his own Nation? What about when you pull out money and it's a Black man on the money? I want us to live again.