The story so far: On August 25, in a press note, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) issued its findings on India at the end of a review of the country’s recent human rights track record. This session of the committee reviewed Finland, Honduras, Kuwait, and India.
The UNCERD said that it was “gravely concerned” about “reports of large-scale violations perpetrated by law enforcement officials against ethnic, and ethno-religious groups indigenous and Tribal peoples, including Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, particularly Dalits and non-citizens”. The committee said that India’s law enforcement officials had carried out “extra-judicial killings, arbitrary and prolonged detention without due process, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence” against these communities. India responded with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stating that the Indian delegation, led by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, had “already rejected the sweeping generalisations”.
The UNCERD recommended that India “as a matter of urgency, acknowledge the discriminatory nature and seriousness of the problem of racial discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes targeting Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum seekers, and take effective measures to address the root causes thereof and to protect their rights”. It further recommended that India should “refrain from collective expulsion” of migrants and asylum seekers who are in need of international protection “in respect of the principle of non-refoulement”. It called upon India to “ensure the public condemnation of racist hate speech targeting migrants and asylum-seekers, and condemn racist hate speech by politicians and influential public figures”. It urged India to “take measures to ensure accountability and end impunity by conducting effective, thorough and impartial investigations into all reports of human rights abuses and violations perpetrated against migrants and asylum-seekers, particularly Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum seekers, including racial discrimination, hate speech, dissemination of negative stereotypes, systematic use of racial profiling and racially motivated excessive use of force during law enforcement operations, arbitrary detention, unlawful killings and torture and ill-treatment”. It further recommended that India should review its “legislative framework, namely the Immigration and Foreigners Act, to align it with the Convention [International Convention on Elimination on All Forms of Racial Discrimination]”. The Committee has recommended that India should “suspend the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and review its legislative framework, namely the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, to align it with the objectives and purposes of the Convention [International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination]: that it combats statelessness, address the complexity of the procedure and ensure oversight and access to available and effective remedies”. The Committee called on India to “ratify the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness”. The Committee took note of the fact that the Indian delegation presented facts before it on the basis of the census of 2011 and called on India “to collect and provide to the Committee comprehensive and disaggregated statistics on the demographic composition of the population, while respecting the principle of self-identification and anonymity in the 2027 census, particularly ethnic and ethno-religious groups, Indigenous/Tribal Peoples”.
The Committee has called for protection of the rights of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and called for protection of the rights of Naga, Kuki, Chakma and Hajong peoples.
It called on India to “suspend the implementation of the projects on the Great Nicobar and Andaman Islands until a full and independent environmental, economic, social, cultural and spiritual impact study has been completed”. It called for strengthening of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India and “enable it to carry out its mandate, fully effectively and independently, in accordance with the Paris Priciples”. It also called on India to “ensure” NHRC’s “institutional independence and pluralistic balance in its composition and staff, in accordance with the diversity of India’s population”.
