enforcement officer, in particular, an untrained one, ignorant of the culture and experience of minorities, is not a fair standard. The use of force by the police must be guided by the principle of exceptionality. Militarisation of Policing Protests The issue of excessive force is increased with the trend toward the militarization of the police, or in some cases in Latin America, the deployment of armed forces to carry out what should be policing functions to keep law and order. In some countries, the impetus for this militarisation has been the ‘War on drugs’ or responses to 9/11, e.g. in the North America. In others, it is an offshoot from former dictator regimes which linger. Such military style operations utilise swat teams and military style equipment. Such engagement does not meet the standards of the inter-American system which have emphasized that law and order functions should be the preserve of efficient, well trained national police forces utilizing proportionate methods of policing. Criminalisation of Protests The Commission has interrogated the phenomenon of the criminalisation of protests and in addition, of human rights defenders in numerous fora. This is an abuse of the legal framework for law and order. Criminalisation applies across the board to both Afrodescendants, whether those protesting their disadvantage because of displacement due to the armed conflict in Columbia, or in Brazil, or Afro Americans protesting police abuse in the US. Incidentally, there is concrete evidence of blatant discrimination in this criminalization. In my recent site visit to Missouri I received testimony from white protestors who said that the police walked straight past them to deliberately arrest only the black protestors in Ferguson.