UN calls on countries to tackle systemic racism

GENEVA－The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution that urges countries to tackle systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent.

In the resolution, released on Tuesday and brought by a group of African countries, the council harshly condemned "continuing racially discriminatory and violent practices perpetrated by many law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent".

The resolution follows a damning report published last month by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet that calls for systemic racism against black people to be immediately dismantled.

Presenting the report, which was initiated following the murder of African American George Floyd by a white police officer last year, Bachelet told the council early this past week that there was "an urgent need to confront the legacies of enslavement".

In her report, which addressed systemic racism worldwide, Bachelet also called on countries to confront colonial pasts and racially discriminatory policies and systems, and to seek "reparatory justice".

Recalling the murder of Floyd on May 25, 2020, the resolution says that the event drew attention to the scourge of systemic and structural racism and galvanized efforts to address this global problem in the US and around the world.

The report also highlights systemic racism in policing, detailing information about the deaths of at least 190 Africans and people of African descent at the hands of law enforcement officials－nearly all of them in the Americas and Europe.

In a bid to help address the problem, a new expert team called for in Tuesday's resolution will be asked to examine "the root causes of systemic racism in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, the excessive use of force, racial profiling".

It will also probe other police violations that "may lead to disproportionate and widespread interaction between law enforcement officers and Africans and people of African descent".

The resolution notes that the trans-Atlantic slave trade is among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples have been victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences.

The resolution provides for the establishment of an international independent expert mechanism, comprising three experts with law enforcement and human rights expertise, to investigate governments' responses to peaceful anti-racism protests and all violations of international human rights law and to contribute to accountability and redress for victims.

Their main task will be promoting racial justice and equality in law enforcement around the world, the impact of "legacies of colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans", and accountability and redress for victims.

Xinhua - Agencies