A/HRC/51/54 and neighbourhood surveillance, created devastating legal consequences and psychological trauma for adolescents of African descent. Trauma also occurred vicariously, as children witnessed the targeting of people of African descent. Redress required a radical reduction of law enforcement encounters, addressing racist bias in society and treating all children as children, with equal protection of their human rights. 37. Benyam Mezmur, a member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, noted the systemic discrimination faced by children of African descent and stressed the importance of disaggregated data, as national averages often masked the challenges and realities specific to children of African descent. The Committee was deeply concerned about the human rights situation of children of African descent, in particular in the areas of health, education and juvenile justice. Child and maternal mortality rates remained high, in particular among rural and indigenous children and children of African descent. Significant racial disparities in meaningful access to education persisted. Lack of birth registration and underregistration, a significant concern for children of African descent globally, increased the risk of trafficking and criminal justice system involvement, limited access to social assistance and often prompted age-determination processes with disproportionately negative outcomes for people of African descent. Mr. Mezmur called for a systemic approach to the decriminalization of minor offences, the implementation of pre-arrest diversion programmes, the examination of the use of digital technology such as facial recognition and machine-learning technologies, and recognition that discriminatory application of the law, rather than the law itself, might drive systemic discrimination. In its general comment No. 24 (2019), the Committee on the Rights of the Child had recommended early intervention and child-friendly, interdisciplinary approaches. Mr. Mezmur noted that leaving no child behind required bringing the issues of children of African descent from the margins to the mainstream in education, health, social services and child justice, emphasizing that the Convention on the Rights of the Child required no less. 38. Alexandra Montgomery, Programme Director at Amnesty International Brazil, discussed the impact of excessive, arbitrary, disproportionate and unlawful use of force on children of African descent by law enforcement officers in Brazil, noting the role of poverty, lack of access to education and health, incarceration, violence and structural racism in politics. She discussed recent incidents of State-involved violence in Black communities and reported crossfire in neighbourhoods involving helicopter gunships, noting that most victims were young Black men. In addition, extrajudicial killings of children by police, brutality, home invasions, sexual exploitation and the suspension of essential services were committed with impunity and systematically covered up. She noted that justice and reparations, as well as independent mechanisms for investigation, monitoring and accountability, could break the cycle of impunity. 39. Robin Walker Sterling of Northwestern University, United States, noted the social and historical underpinnings linking Black children to criminality. Although the nineteenthcentury juvenile justice system recognized that children should be treated differently from adults, that rehabilitative ideal had been reserved for white children. Black children had been seen as exempt from possibility of redemption and had been treated more harshly, in the adult criminal legal system. In the late twentieth century, false beliefs about the threat of Black youth were perpetuated by the media and Black youth were overrepresented as violent offenders. The “superpredator” myth, explicitly racialized, fuelled legislation facilitating the transfer of youth to adult courts. She noted that justice should be the same for all children, but that children of African descent were twice as likely to be arrested although they were not committing crimes at a higher rate. She called for the abolition of transfer laws, the decriminalization of misdemeanours such as shoplifting and revised narratives and media representation of Black children as offenders, which continued to shape perceptions of dangerousness. 40. Verene Shepherd, Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, discussed administrative injustices in the policing of children of African descent’s natural hairstyles by schools and public agencies. She noted that penalizing cultural choices to wear natural hairstyles constituted racial discrimination, contravened article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and reinforced the othering of Black children, another way that Black identity was policed. 10