Sixty years ago, the world tried to stop racial discrimination and failed

"In 1963, in the midst of the decolonisation wave, a group of nine newly independent African states presented a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) calling for the drafting of an international treaty on the elimination of racial discrimination. As the representative from Senegal observed: Racial discrimination was still the rule in African colonial territories and in South Africa, and was not unknown in other parts of the world The time had come to bring all States into that struggle."

"The groundbreaking International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) was unanimously adopted by the UNGA two years later. The convention rejected any doctrine of superiority based on racial differentiation as scientifically false, morally condemnable and socially unjust. Today, as we mark 60 years since its adoption, millions of people around the world continue to face racial discrimination whether in policing, migration policies or exploitative labour conditions."

"In Brazil, Amnesty International documented how a deadly police operation in Rio de Janeiro's favelas this October resulted in the massacre by security forces of more than 100 people, most of them Afro-Brazilians and living in poverty. In Tunisia, we have seen how authorities have for the past three years used migration policies to carry out racially targeted arrests and detentions and mass expulsions of Black refugees and asylum seekers."

States from the Global South initiated the international legal framework to prohibit racial discrimination during decolonisation. Nine newly independent African states proposed a UN resolution in 1963 to draft a treaty against racial discrimination, leading to the unanimous adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) two years later. The convention declared doctrines of racial superiority scientifically false, morally condemnable and socially unjust. Sixty years after adoption, millions still face racial discrimination in policing, migration policies and exploitative labour, with documented abuses in Brazil, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

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