A new office created within the Organization of American States (OAS) is charged with protecting the human rights of 150 million people of African descent in the mostly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. In a February 25 statement, the OAS said the head of the new office will guard against discrimination against the region's largest ethnic minority, who comprise close to 30 percent of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean. The OAS said the new position, formally called the "Special Rapporteurship on the Rights of Persons of African Descent and on Racial Discrimination," will focus on such issues as generating "awareness" by the OAS member states of their "duty to respect the human rights of Afro-descendants" and on the need to eliminate "all forms of racial discrimination" against this group. The new office also will prepare reports and special studies, and analyze complaints of racial discrimination against Afro-descendants. In addition, the office will make recommendations to an OAS body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), on setting up hearings about alleged violations of the rights of Afro-Latinos. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) says people of African descent total 40 percent of the poor in the Americas. In Brazil and Colombia, the countries with the largest black populations in South America, Afro-Latinos are among the poorest, least educated and lowest-paid citizens. In Brazil, 52 percent of Afro-Latinos live in houses with no adequate sanitation; in Colombia, 80 percent of the black population lives in conditions of extreme poverty, said the IDB.