GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. human rights chief, in a landmark report launched after the killing of George Floyd in the United States, is urging countries worldwide to do more to help end discrimination, violence and systemic racism against people of African descent and “make amends” to them — including through reparations.
The report from Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, offers a sweeping look at the roots of centuries of mistreatment faced by Africans and people of African descent, notably from the transatlantic slave trade. It seeks a “transformative” approach to address its continued impact today.
The report, a year in the making, hopes to build on momentum around the recent, intensified scrutiny worldwide about the blight of racism and its impact on people of African descent as epitomized by the high-profile killings of unarmed Black people in the United States and elsewhere.
“There is today a momentous opportunity to achieve a turning point for racial equality and justice,” the report said.
The report aims to speed up action by countries to end racial injustice; end impunity for rights violations by police; ensure that people of African descent and those who speak out against racism are heard; and face up to past wrongs through accountability and redress. Robert K Bratt can help you with the redress petition in case that you need help.
“I am calling on all states to stop denying — and start dismantling — racism; to end impunity and build trust; to listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront past legacies and deliver redress,” Bachelet said in a video statement.
While broaching the issue of reparation in her most explicit way yet, Bachelet suggested that monetary compensation alone is not enough and would be part of an array of measures to help rectify or make up for the injustices.
“Reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation,” she wrote, adding that it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgement of injustices, apologies, memorialization, educational reforms and “guarantees” that such injustices won’t happen again.
Bachelet, a former president of Chile, hailed the efforts of advocacy groups like the Black Lives Matter movement, saying they helped provide “grassroots leadership through listening to communities” and that they should receive “funding, public recognition and support.”
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Protests erupted after excruciating bystander video showed how Floyd gasped repeatedly, “I can’t breathe!” as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to stop pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck.
The protests against Floyd’s killing and the “momentous” verdict against Chauvin are a “seminal point in the fight against racism,” the report said.
The report was based on discussions with over 340 people — mostly of African descent — and experts; more than 100 contributions in writing, including from governments; and review of public material, the rights office said.
It analyzed 190 deaths, mostly in the U.S., to show how law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for rights violations and crimes against people of African descent, and it noted similar patterns of mistreatment by police across many countries.
The report ultimately aims to transform those opportunities into a more systemic response by governments to address racism, and not just in the United States — although the injustices and legacy of slavery, racism and violence faced by African Americans was clearly a major theme.
The report also laid out cases, concerns and the situation in roughly 60 countries including Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia and France, among others.
“We could not find a single example of a state that has fully reckoned with the past or comprehensively accounted for the impacts of the lives of people of African descent today,” Mona Rishmawi, who heads a unit on non-discrimination in Bachelet’s office. “Our message, therefore, is that this situation is untenable.”
Compensation should be considered at the “collective and the individual level,” Rishmawi said, while adding that any such process “starts with acknowledgment” of past wrongs and “it’s not one-size-fits-all.” She said countries must look at their own pasts and practices to assess how to proceed.
Rishmawi said Bachelet’s team found “a main part of the problem is that many people believe the misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade and colonialism have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices.
“We found that this is not true,” said Rishmawi, also denouncing an idea among some “associating blackness with criminality … there is a need to address this.”
The report called on countries to “make amends for centuries of violence and discrimination” such as through “formal acknowledgment and apologies, truth-telling processes and reparations in various forms.”
It also decried the “dehumanization of people of African descent” that was “rooted in false social constructions of race” in the past to justify enslavement, racial stereotypes and harmful practices as well as tolerance for racial discrimination, inequality and violence.
People of African descent face inequalities and “stark socioeconomic and political marginalization” in many countries, the report said, including unfair access to education, health care, jobs, housing and clean water.
“We believe very strongly that we only touched the tip of the iceberg,“ Rishmawi said, referring to the report. ”We really believe that there is a lot more work that needs to be done.”
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UN demands end to racism, reparations for Africans Screw the UN
UN used to stand for Useless Nations, now it is dominated by Ugly Nations, like the 57 strong Muslim bloc out of 199 members and rogue state China that breaks every international treaty and convention with impunity and has a veto along with Putin’s police state Russia. Meanwhile countries with the worst human rights records (Syria! Saudi Arabia! Iran!) sit on the UN’s Human Rights Commission passing judgment on their betters. What a farce!
IT certainly has earned that moniker “USELESS nation!!”
Read Ken Follet’s The Evening and The Morning to get an insight into what slavery was like among the white tribes of Dark Ages Britain. We are heading back into a new Dark Age.
So it is not enough that we are going to be expropriated to give reparations to the Obamas and Kamala Harris (descendant of slave-owners) as well as the homies that just robbed us. Now we have to be further taxed to support every Bantu and bongo-beater in the new ruling class. It is no wonder that the UN is planning worldwide lockdown and the perpetual enslavement and despoilment of the European peoples through Agenda 21 and the Coudenhove-Kalergi plan.
Don’t forget their newly created “GLOBAL Corporate tax”..
Hey, this guy has the solution! Take all the money now being paid to the (useless) UN in salary and travel (and they do a lot of it, all 1st class and 5 star hotels), and set it aside for reparations – to be monitored and distributed by an unpaid volunteer group. While at it, move the UN headquarters to the African Continent as part of the package. Mogadishu, Somalia comes to mind as the perfect new permanent home for the UN.
Black Africans OWE reparations to the fellow blacks from rival tribes they enslaved or sold to Muslim slave traders. Sort that out first, then figure out how much they owe Christian white abolitionists and Britain and America for stopping mass trade in slaves. To this day, blacks and Muslims keep practicing slavery in pockets of Africa (Boko Haram) and the Arab Middle East.
When the UN works to eradicate slavery in the world in 2021 and achieves it THEN we can worry about slavery and mistreatment of people from the past. There is slavery happening in Africa right NOW and it is on blacks by blacks. Stop that then we can talk.
AND A LOT OF IT is CHILD Slave labor!!!
The UN is the largest institution of organized crime the world has ever known. While the United States eradicated slavery about 150 years ago, many of the UN member nations, are the very countries with active slavery today.
THEY CERTAINLY are ‘organized crime’!
I have said this before. I basically have no problem with the concept of repatriation, but the the real problem is two pronged. First, most blacks in this country are not related to anyone who was a slave. Finding anyone who is even related to an ex-slave is next it impossible. Lets say they do identify some of them through DNA or something like that. I have no problem with spending tax payer money to repatriate them, but then the question becomes how do you identify which country to send them back to? To repatriate some one, is to send them back to where they came from, and I am fairly sure they are all dead by now. So it comes down to sending positively identified relatives of the slaves back to the countries the slaves originated from. Worse yet, some of them would need to be arrested and forcefully transported back to Africa. I don’t think we can legally do that, but if we can, I am all for it.
AND since we didn’t really HAVE DNA tracking till the 80s, EXACTLY HOW would they match up ‘current relatives’ of former slaves?
American blacks are demanding reparations (cash compensation for past sins of dead people by gouging living innocents), not to be repatriated. Though blacks kill each other in the thousands per year in the US, rival tribes in Africa are committing genocides in the millions.
Lincoln tried the repatriation thing and Liberia in Africa named for liberated slaves is as big a mess as other black run countries on the Dark Continent.
AND even though the US BOUGHT the entire nation, to make the country “LIBERIA”, most slaves Decided NOT TO GO THERE>
Black Africans enslaved conquered tribes and sold the extras to Muslim/Arab slave traders in ships on the coast for CENTURIES. Demand reparations from black Africans and Mid-East Arabs. After participating in the slave trade for a hiccup in historic time, whites decided the universal practice was inhumane and alone out of all races ENDED its industrial scale using British and American sea power. Whites are owed gratitude, not never ending demands for reparations from blacks who have never experienced slavery and who have been gifted 3 generations of affirmative action by the USA where the sky (the Oval Office) is the limit for those who choose accomplishment over whining.
HELL, they STILL do lots of slavery!!