U.N. panel suggests U.S.

reconcile races with

reparations, rights agency
By Associated Press, adapted by Newsela staff
02.16.16

WASHINGTON, D.C. The United States should consider reparations to AfricanAmerican descendants of slavery, a United Nations working group said Friday.
Reparations are a way of making amends for a wrong that has been done. The
working group also recommended that the United States should establish a national
human rights commission and publicly acknowledge that the trans-Atlantic slave
trade was a crime against humanity.

The U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a group
established in 2002 to promote the human rights of people of African descent,
released its preliminary recommendations after more than a week of meetings with
African-Americans and others from around the country. The participants hailed
from Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; New York City; the District of Columbia;
and Jackson, Mississippi.

Finding No Commitment To Change

Mireille Fanon Mendes-France of France is the working group's chairwoman. After
finishing its fact-finding mission, the group was "extremely concerned about the

human rights situation of African-Americans," she said in the report. "The colonial
history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial
terrorism and racial inequality in the U.S. remains a serious challenge." There has
been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people
of African descent, she added.

For example, Mendes-France mentioned the recent deaths of unarmed AfricanAmerican men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner. She said the way the two men
died at the hands of police is comparable to the lynchings of black men in the South
from the post-Civil War days through the civil rights era. Those deaths, and others,
have inspired protests around the country under the Black Lives Matter movement.

Comparing Police Killings To Lynchings

"Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial
terror lynchings in the past," she told reporters. Exemption from punishment for
state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed
urgently, she added.

The working group's members, none of whom are from the United States, said they
were shocked by some of the things they learned.
Black Men Behind Bars

For example, "it's very easy in the United States for African-Americans to be
imprisoned, and that was very concerning," said Sabelo Gumedze of South Africa.

Federal officials say 37 percent of the state and federal prison populations were
African-American males in 2014. The working group suggests the United States
implement several reforms. These include reducing the use of mandatory minimum
laws, ending racial profiling, ending excessive bail and banning solitary confinement
in prison.

"What stands out for me is the lack of acknowledgement of the slave trade," said
Ricardo A. Sunga III, who lives in the Philippines.

The working group suggests monuments, markers and memorials be erected in the
United States to encourage dialogue. Past injustices and crimes against AfricanAmericans also need to be addressed with reparatory justice, the group wrote.

Steps Toward Improvement

The group will suggest several U.S. changes to improve human rights for AfricanAmericans. These changes include establishing a national human rights commission,
and ratifying international human rights treaties. Congress will also be asked to
study slavery and its aftereffects, and consider reparations.

The working group also visited the United States in 2010, and found similar
problems. According to its final report, African-Americans faced disproportionately
high unemployment, lower income levels, and less access to education and quality
health-care. There was also a high rate of certain health conditions, electoral
disenfranchisement and structural issues in the administration of justice,
particularly incarceration rates.

The working group will give its final findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council in
Geneva, Switzerland, in September.

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