FIJI should make a declaration under Article 14 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) to allow individuals to submit complaints about racial discrimination to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for review.
This call was made by the Regional Representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the Pacific, Heike Alefsen, during a Dialogue Fiji panel discussion marking International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last week.
Ms Alefsen reflected on the historical significance of the day, recalling the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, which played a pivotal role in the global fight against racial discrimination and led to the establishment of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1965.
“This day is very closely connected to the fight against colonialism, the emergence of nations from colonial rule, and the broader struggle for civil rights,” she said.
“And also to the fight for more civic rights, for the civil rights movement, which of course over 60 years ago was extremely instrumental for many of the human rights developments in the United Nations.”
Highlighting the global prevalence of racial discrimination, Ms Alefsen stressed the need for continued advocacy, legal frameworks, and international cooperation to combat racism.
She noted that 182 countries, including Fiji, had ratified ICERD, but seven independent Pacific nations have yet to do so.
She urged them to commit to the convention as part of ongoing efforts to eliminate racism worldwide.
“We’re seeing it in many, many different nooks of the world, in many different countries.
“It is obviously one of the most entrenched human rights violations, and it’s perhaps no accident, no coincidence that it was one of the very first treaties and conventions that actually has come out of the United Nations system, and it’s one of the most ratified, 182 countries in the world have ratified this convention, including Fiji.
“In the Pacific, we do unfortunately still have about seven of the independent countries in the Pacific that haven’t ratified this convention, so we obviously encourage on this day and in this year of the anniversary, the ratification.
“We also encourage, and this is something that we would like to encourage Fiji to do, to make a declaration under the relevant article in the convention to accept individual complaints.”
