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The chapter examines the emergence of the issue of caste-discrimination under ICERD in the 1990s, its consolidation in General Recommenaiton 29, and State opposition, in particular from India, which contests the categorisation of caste as a form of descent-based discrimination and therefore a form of racial discrimination.

The chapter represents a discussion of racial discrimination and gender justice, or the link between the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and the furtherance of gender justice via the UN treaty system.

The chapter articulates the relationship between the minority rights discourse and ICERD, and looks forward to a greater understanding of its relevance to minority rights. Overall the chapter paints ICERD as a key custodian of minority rights within the UN system, a role which has been under-represented in the literature.

Through the issue of disaggregated data collection, the chapter tracks the changes in CERD’s approach from its early days to contemporary questions, capturing shifts in the Committee’s priorities and engagement with States parties.

The chapter outlines how ICERD has traditionally had an outlier status among international human rights treaties in respect of racist hate speech due to its heavy reliance on the criminalisation of certain types of expression in order to combat racism. The recent General Recommendation 35 recognises that ICERD as a living instrument must be better synchronised and informed by contemporary understandings of racist hate speech, its causes, manifestations and impact.

The chapter highlights the continued and future relevance of ICERD. While racism as an official state policy no longer exists, racial discrimination remains a reality, taking new forms. The constructive dialogue between States parties and CERD will enable the continued application of the treaty to new and emerging situations and to new forms of racial discrimination.

The chapter opens the collection with a tour d’horizon of the origins, lifetime and experience of implementing the treaty from the perspective of a CERD member. It argues that the treaty ought to be considered a significant step forward in the extension of the rule of law.

The chapter analyses the role of CERD in highlighting and addressing the discrimination suffered by Afro-descendants in Latin America. CERD General Recommendation 34 (on people of African descent is detailed, including its potential as a stepping-stone towards an International Declaration on the Rights of Afro-descendants.

The chapter highlights the potential of ICERD to contribute to the process of transitional justice in post-conflict societies. In particular it identifies truth commissions as having largely ignored the potential for ICERD as a transitional tool, and calls on CERD, States Parties and other actors to better understand and carve out a role for ICERD in the truth and reconciliation process.

Chapters 1 illustrates the major steps and missteps in Cuba’s state-sponsored campaign to eliminate racial discrimination that began in March 1959. Using government speeches and articles, editorials, and political cartoons from Cuban newspapers, this chapter finds that the revolution’s choice to speak to the unequal situation facing Cubans of color was somewhat surprising given M 26-7’s silence about race during the 1950s war against Batista. However, the need to respond to pressure from Afro-Cuban leaders and to unify the nation against U.S. opposition led the new government to break their silence on racial discrimination. In March 1959, Castro announced the national anti-discrimination campaign and initiated what would become the revolution’s legacy as an antiracist government. Unfortunately, the revolution fell into the same trap that plagued nineteenth-century patriots—the desire to resolve racial inequalities by moving beyond race to a colorblind society.

The chapter explores the common thread linking ICERD and genoide, including CERD’s 2005 Declaration on the Prevention of Genocide, and list of indicators relevant to the prevention of genocide, termed ‘indicators of patterns of systematic and massive racial discrimination’.

The chapter reviews CERD's contribution to the development of the rights of indigenous peoples under international law, as inter alia the first human rights treaty monitoring body to adopt a specific general recommendation on the rights of indigenous peoples.

The chapter provides a chronological account of CERD’s engagement with discrimination against Roma and its central contribution to developments which have brought about a fundamentally changed understanding of the Roma as a heterodox set of ethnic groups.

This chapter first examines the history of Burakumin activism to combat discrimination against them based on their former outcaste status, which by the 1970s had established them as an influential group that had secured some successes. However, social discrimination against Burakumin persisted, and Burakumin activists explored different ways to fight it. Global human rights emerged as a prominent source of legitimacy for their activism and they began engaging with international human rights institutions. Initially intended to advance their own issues, their international engagement developed into a new pillar for their activism that focused on protecting minority rights across the globe, resulting in the establishment of a new international NGO with a UN consultative status, the International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR). Through IMADR, they expanded global human rights by establishing a new rights norm against discrimination based on descent and work.

This chapter offers a comprehensive assessment of international practice—at both the ‘universal’ and regional level—confirming that today the cultural element represents a decisive factor in the context of the interpretation, adjudication, and enforcement of human rights standards. The crucial feature of relevant jurisprudence and other pertinent practice rests in the consideration of the cultural element as the parameter to be used in order to establish whether a human rights breach attained a specially qualified degree of gravity, or even—in many instances— whether such a breach did take place or not. Such an approach covers virtually all human rights standards, including the most fundamental ones. The said practice shows that the process of culturalization of human rights is today a reality determining the scope and content of international human rights law.

Black workers could not gain membership in construction unions, and therefore could not find employment in this growing sector of the local economy. Brooklyn CORE, along with a coalition of black ministers from Brooklyn, led a six-week protest campaign at the worksite of the Downstate Medical Center, a state funded construction project. Over 1,000 arrests made this the most significant Civil Rights protest sight in New York City during the long hot summer of 1963. However, threats of violence from people unaffiliated with CORE or the ministers brought a premature end to the campaign.

This chapter looks at the Black experience in the FDNY during the last quarter of the 20^th Century. During this period, the City, fire department, and the fire unions all vigorously resisted efforts by the Vulcan Society and the United Women Firefighters to address structural and institutional racism and sexism. Black representation, after growing slightly and then stalling in the mid 1980s, receded slowly and steadily as the century closed.

The chapter offers a compelling case study on the operationalization of CERD’s early warning and urgent action procedure in the case of the Subanon community located at the foot of Mt Canatuan in the Phillippines, and provides a close-up of the relevance of the treaty on the ground.

Chapter Seven illustrates the culmination of the tendencies toward combining demands for recognition of class and race based discrimination in the early 1970s. Among a series of other similar cases, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez is a pivotal "taxpayer" case that shut the door on meaningful legal remedies for school inequality. The Rodriguez claimants were low-income children and families of color whose school district was dramatically unequal in comparison to the local, wealthy, white school district in the city. The Court, however, treated the claims of race and class discrimination that the claimants put forward as separate, and ignored the race claim in order to focus on class alone, which they dismissed as a category not entitled to constitutional protection. This chapter argues that the result of Rodriguez was directly tied to the idea that tax status -- and therefore taxable wealth -- was legitimately tied to educational rights and equality. The Court's decision provided an anticommunist rationale for school property tax funding inequality by defending capitalism, economic privacy and local fiscal control against the intersectional claims of race and class inequality.