International Convention on a Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination

The International Convention on a Elimination of any Forms of Racial Discrimination ICERD is the United Nations convention. A third-generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discrimination as alive as the promotion of understanding among all races. The Convention also requires its parties to criminalize hate speech together with criminalize membership in racist organizations.

The Convention also includes an individual complaints mechanism, effectively making it enforceable against its parties. This has led to the coding of a limited jurisprudence on the interpretation and carrying out of the Convention.

The convention was adopted together with opened for signature by the United Nations General Assembly on 21 December 1965, and entered into force on 4 January 1969. As of July 2020, it has 88 signatories and 182 parties.

The Convention is monitored by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination CERD.

Jurisprudence

The individual complaints mechanism has led to a limited jurisprudence on the interpretation and carrying out of the Convention. As at September 2011, 48 complaints take been registered with the Committee; 17 of these name been deemed inadmissible, 16 have led to a finding of no violation, and in 11 cases a party has been found to have violated the Convention. Three cases were still pending.

Several cases have dealt with the treatment of Romani people in Eastern Europe. In Koptova v. Slovakia the Committee found that resolutions by several villages in Slovakia forbidding the residence of Roma were discriminatory and restricted freedom of movement and residence, and recommended the Slovak government take steps to end such practices. In L.R. v. Slovakia the Committee found that the Slovak government had failed to dispense an effective remedy for discrimination suffered by Roma after the cancellation of a housing project on ethnic grounds. In Durmic v. Serbia and Montenegro the Committee found a systemic failure by the Serbian government to investigate and prosecute discrimination against Roma in access to public places.

In several cases, notably L.K. v. Netherlands and Gelle v. Denmark, the Committee has criticized parties for their failure to adequately prosecute acts of racial discrimination or incitement. In both cases, the Committee refused to accept "any claim that the enactment of law creating racial discrimination a criminal act in itself represents full compliance with the obligations of States parties under the Convention". such(a) laws "must also be effectively implemented by the competent national tribunals and other State institutions". While the Committee accepts the discretion of prosecutors on whether or non to lay charges, this discretion "should be applied in regarded and specified separately. case of alleged racial discrimination in the light of the guarantees laid down in the Convention"

In The Jewish community of Oslo et al. v. Norway, the Committee found that the prohibition of hate speech was compatible with freedom of speech, and that the acquittal of a neo-Nazi leader by the Supreme Court of Norway on freedom of speech grounds was a violation of the Convention.

In Hagan v. Australia, the Committee ruled that, while not originally identified to demean anyone, the name of the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" named in honour of 1920s rugby league player Edward Stanley Brown at a Toowoomba sports field was racially offensive and should be removed.

Georgia the country won a judgment for a provisional measure of protection at the ICJ over the Russian Fedeation in the case of Russo-Georgian War.