Deathof George Floyd in Minneapolis, US, has led to global protests against police brutality, especially against ethnic minorities, and a debate on racism. In this background, the State of Qatar has reaffirmed its principled stance against all racist and discriminatory practices. Speaking at an urgent debate at UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Qatar’s Permanent Representative H E Ambassador Ali Khalfan Al Mansouri said equality and prevention of discrimination were international obligations stipulated by all human rights covenants.
These principles, Qatar’s envoy said, form part of the basis of the rule of law, and therefore impunity for any crime motivated by racist attitudes will weaken the rule of law and will encourage the recurrence of such crimes. If these practices go unchecked, they can affect global stability, security and coexistence. Ambassador Al Mansouri expressed Qatar’s principled position against racial discrimination, regardless of the perpetrators, location and the identity of victims. The protests over Floyd’s death and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement have also led to a debate on slavery and colonial history, with many of the hitherto celebrated figures in the West now facing public scrutiny over their role in slave trade and colonialism.
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, while addressing the session in Geneva on Wednesday, pointed to the ‘gratuitous brutality’ on display in the killing of George Floyd. She said failure to acknowledge and confront the legacy of the slave trade and colonialism has led to systemic racism and racial violence in today’s world, and called upon the countries to make amends ‘for centuries of violence and discrimination’ through ‘formal apologies, truthtelling processes, and reparations in various forms’. Echoing the same thoughts, Qatar’s Ambassador said discriminatory and racist practices that affect certain groups in society based on their nationality, ethnic origin, or even their religion are the main source of many of the tragedies the world is witnessing today.
H E the Ambassador deplored that despite the global efforts for equality and tolerance, the phenomena of intolerance, racism and discrimination have recently re-emerged and spread throughout the world. Highlighting the need for strengthening means of oversight of discriminatory racist practices, H E Ambassador Al Mansouri said: “Out of our firm conviction that racism and racial discrimination constitute a violation of the purposes and principles of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a clear violation of all human rights conventions, this Council is more concerned than any other mechanism to take effective measures against these practices and it is not enough to just denounce and condemn them.”
