Presented at the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), 3086th Meeting, 113th Session, on 12th August at the HQ of United Nations in Geneva.
“The United Kingdom, its government, and public bodies are institutionally racist and there has been a fundamentally failed attempt at acknowledging and tackling this. Instead, the government has failed to accept the existence of institutional racism. Last week, riots firmly rooted in racial hatred, Islamophobia, and white supremacy took place across our country. These riots were the direct result of years of hostile environment policies, racist political rhetoric that targets some of the most vulnerable communities, and a failure by Government to seriously commit to ending racism.
We have seen numerous plans and programmes set out to end racial discrimination which have failed. The police race action plan has not improved trust and confidence in policing among Black communities. The Windrush Compensation Scheme has been too complex, slow, and in many cases retraumatised survivors of the scandal. The Cabinet Office’s Race Disparity Unit, responsible for overseeing government work on this issue, has faded into obscurity.
This is all underpinned by weak equality legislation which places non-committal requirements on public bodies and has a fundamental lack of accountability on adherence due to the lack of strong language, failure to fully ratify the legislation including Article 14, and the systematic unravelling of the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) through funding cuts and political turbulence within the body.
The UK Government has lacked strategy when it comes to ending systemic and institutional racism, but more importantly it has lacked care and compassion for Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage people living in the UK. The riots last week represented a bursting point, and we hope that the committee will make strong recommendations to help guide the new Government in tackling racial inequality.”
Meka Beresford, Head of Policy, Action for Race Equality
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