The UN’s top rights body Monday agreed to a request from African countries to urgently debate racism and police brutality this week following unrest in the US and beyond over George Floyd’s death.
As the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council resumed after breaking in March over the coronavirus pandemic, council president Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger proposed to hold the debate on Wednesday at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT).
“I can see no objections. It is therefore so decided,” she said.
It is only the fifth time in the council’s 14-year history that it has agreed to hold an “urgent debate”, which is a special debate agreed upon within a regular session of the council.
Burkina Faso’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva last Friday sent Tichy-Fisslberger a letter on behalf of Africa’s 54 countries calling for an urgent debate on “racially inspired human rights violations, police brutality against people of African descent and the violence against the peaceful protests that call for these injustices to stop.”
That call came after Floyd’s family, along with the families of other victims of police violence and over 600 NGOs this week called on the council to urgently address systemic racism and police impunity in the US.
Read EquityPandit’s Nifty Outlook for the Week