Fifty Years Of The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination

This is an edited collection on ICERD, the oldest of the UN human rights treaties. It provides a unique combination of members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and academic and other experts, to discuss the importance of the treaty on its 50th anniversary.

This Oxford Commentary is the first comprehensive article-by-article analysis of the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It discusses the conceptual and instrumental framework of the Convention and the CERD Committee, and addresses some of the critical challenges confronting the Convention.

The universal feeling that discrimination and intolerance based on race. religion or beliefs have to be confronted by the international community led to the adoption, half a century ago, of the international convention to which this book is devoted, one of the most ratified treaties. The book comments on the contents of the Convention and its impact on anti-racist and anti-bias legislation and jurisprudence, as well as its influence on, and applicability to other international texts. In an Introduction to this reprint, the author updates the status of the Convention, summarizes the work of CERD, the implementation body of the Convention, and discusses its relevance to general human rights, particularly the area of religious intolerance, and some difficult issues such as the possible clash with other fundamental freedoms.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted thirty-five years ago, on 21 December 1965, by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and entered into force on 4 January 1969. It was the first of the universal human rights treaties with a treaty-monitoring body to be adopted and enter into force. At present, 156 States have ratified or acceded to this Convention. Under article 9 of the Convention, each State party has to submit a report within one year after the entry into force of the Convention for that State and thereafter every two years and whenever so requested. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has been formed to monitor the implementation of the Convention. At its fortieth session, in 1991, the Committee initiated the practice of adopting concluding observations by the Committee as a whole on each report it considered, and at its forty-third session, in 1993, the Committee started to use a standard format for the presentation of its concluding observations. The Committee makes a general evaluation of the report and of the dialogue with the delegation, and it makes note of positive developments that may have occurred during the period under review, of factors and difficulties impeding the implementation of the Convention, and of principal subjects of concern. It also makes suggestions and recommendations to the State party concerned. The present volume contains concluding observations adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at its forty-third to fifty-seventh sessions (1993-2000). Foreword by Mrs. Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.