Team of UN experts on racism, policing set to visit United States

Geneva, Switzerland: Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the United Nations established a team of specialists on racism and policing, who will begin their tour to the United States next week, the organisation said on Friday.

According to the UN, during its two-week trip, the so-called Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law Enforcement will stop in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York City.

The trio of independent investigators will visit with federal, state, and municipal government representatives, law enforcement officials, representatives of civil society groups, and members of the impacted populations and communities.

Throughout the expedition, which is scheduled to span from 24 April to 5 May, the specialists will also tour detention facilities.

“We look forward to gaining first-hand insight about the lived experiences of people of African descent in the United States,” said Juan Mendez, one of Expert Mechanism members, in a statement.

They would also “offer recommendations to the government at all levels, to support efforts in combatting systemic racism and excessive use of force, and ensure accountability and justice”, he said.

The team is tasked to examine laws, policies and practices regulating the use of force by law enforcement, including whether they conformed with international human rights standards.

It would also “make recommendations as to the concrete steps needed to ensure access to justice, accountability and redress for excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent in the United States.”

The racial justice group was created by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 — a year after the murder of Floyd by a white US police officer — to investigate racially-fuelled police violence around the world.

In their first report published last October, the experts complained that a dearth of data in the United States and other countries on the race and ethnicity of people arrested or killed by police presented a major barrier to tackling systemic racism.

They highlighted the lack of a centralised US system to collect such statistics across more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

The experts are due to present a report on their US visit to the UN Human Rights Council during its September-October session.

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