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Friend,
A United Nations committee that is reviewing U.S. compliance with an international treaty on racial discrimination has issued findings that should be seen as a serious rebuke and wakeup call for the Biden administration.
The final report of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), issued on Aug. 30, criticized the systemic and longstanding failure of the U.S. to take compliance with the treaty seriously and to develop mechanisms to integrate its goals into domestic policy.
In its concluding observations and recommendations regarding the U.S., the committee raised significant concerns about compliance with nearly every aspect of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Especially noteworthy was CERD’s focus on issues contained in specific recommendations that the Southern Poverty Law Center submitted to the committee earlier in August. These issues included hate and extremism as well as racial disparities in voting, health care, education, the criminal legal system and immigration.
The SPLC went to Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a coalition of more than 70 advocates from U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to provide documentation to CERD of ongoing racial discrimination and disparities in the U.S. We submitted three reports in advance of the review and traveled with a delegation that included two formerly incarcerated people who shared their experiences with committee members.
We’re pleased that CERD embraced many of our policy recommendations on the issues we raised. We will now work with coalition partners to urge the Biden administration to translate those recommendations into concrete policy changes.
At the same time, it’s deeply troubling that the U.S. has not done more to implement the treaty, the oldest of nine core international human rights accords. The U.S. has ratified only three of the nine. The U.S. signed the treaty on racial discrimination in 1966 but did not ratify it until 1994.
General failure to implement the treaty
At the outset, the committee reiterated concerns it had expressed in past reviews about the continued failure of the U.S. to incorporate the treaty into domestic law and policy, specifically mentioning its notable absence from President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.
The SPLC has repeatedly raised this issue, not only in our reports to CERD but also directly to various U.S. officials.
Even though the U.S. has signed and ratified the treaty, Congress has never taken any steps to incorporate its requirements into U.S. legislation, and no administration has made an effort to do the same when developing and implementing domestic policy. This means that the treaty is in force on paper, but any instance of compliance with its requirements is merely coincidental.
The committee also regretted the continued failure of the United States to create a national human rights institution (NHRI) or any similar coordinating mechanism to monitor implementation of the treaty. Additionally, the committee lamented the continued absence of a comprehensive national action plan to combat systemic racism and structural discrimination. It urged the U.S. to proceed on both fronts.
The U.S. has long declined to establish any federal mechanism to coordinate and monitor implementation of any of its international human rights treaty obligations, claiming that agency-level oversight of related domestic laws and regulations is sufficient. That claim is clearly mistaken, given the results of CERD’s review and the failure of the federal government to even consider these treaties when fashioning domestic policy.
Notably, a White House representative who was part of the president’s Geneva delegation told the committee during the review that the administration would consider proceeding with a study of how best to create an NHRI – a welcome departure from the intentions expressed by the administration during pre-review consultations, when the same person told NGO representatives that there were no plans to pursue this.
The committee also recommended that the U.S. consult with NGOs regarding the creation and implementation of a national action plan to combat systemic racism and structural discrimination.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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