Part III Organs Monitoring Treaty Compliance, 9 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

Subject(s):

Hate speech

This chapter studies the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the oldest of the monitoring bodies of the UN ‘core’ treaties. Preceded by a Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1963, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 21 December 1965 and entered into force on 4 January 1969. CERD oversees the implementation of the Convention. The chapter evaluates how CERD has worked to deliver its mandate, where it has innovated, and where it has been able to draw upon the wider human rights acquis to ground its positions, and where it may have struggled to deliver. It focuses on a number of issues around the core principles: discrimination and the grounds thereof; special measures; segregation; and the problem of addressing hate speech.