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International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (hereinafter ICERD). By 2006, 170 of the 192 UN member states had become parties to this treaty. At the time of its drafting, it was a remarkable innovation, the outcome of moves that started in 1960 when attacks on synagogues and Jewish burial grounds in Germany gave rise to fears of a rise in neo-Nazism. When international remedial action by the United Nations was proposed, newly independent African states, with their eyes on Southern Africa, argued for a convention against racial discrimination. This entry examines the treaty, its implementation, and its future prospects.

What It Says

The ICERD was the first human rights convention to include a provision by which the actions of state parties were to be monitored to see whether they were fulfilling the obligations they had undertaken. It obliged them to report every 2 years on their implementation of the convention and provided for the examination of their reports by an independent expert committee, which was to report the results of its examination to the UN General Assembly.

According to Article 1 of the convention, “The term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” The differentiation of purpose and effect means that both direct and indirect discrimination (or disparate treatment and disparate effect) are covered. Distinctions made by states between citizens and noncitizens are exempted from the definition, as are measures of affirmative action as long as they are not maintained after their objectives have been fulfilled.

Articles 2 through 7 condemn racial segregation and define the obligations of state parties: to make incitement to racial hatred a punishable offence, to provide protections, to compensate victims, and to combat racial prejudices by educational and other means.

Implementation

Those who negotiated its drafting did not expect many states to ratify the convention, yet the number of states becoming parties to it has steadily risen: from 41 in 1970 to 107 in 1980 and 129 in 1990. The United States became the 141st in 1994, though its ratification was subject to extensive reservations. Many states display an ambivalent attitude to this and other human rights treaties. Although states hope to put pressure on certain other states to secure adequate protections for racial minorities, they may not want to expose their own policies and actions to unfriendly criticism.

State reports are examined by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), composed of eighteen experts elected by the state parties. From its first meeting in 1970 through to 1988, its work was influenced by the tensions of the cold war between East and West. Its activities were seen in some quarters as an adjunct to the decolonization movement at the United Nations. CERD found that many governments did not appreciate the extent of the obligations they had assumed by becoming parties to the treaty. For example, in several Latin American countries, citizens could vote only if they understood the Spanish language. CERD held that the less favorable treatment of those who spoke indigenous languages constituted racial discrimination and persuaded these states to amend their laws. In this period, members interpreted the convention as allowing them to receive information from state parties only, and they expressed only their individual opinions on state party compliance.

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