A/HRC/56/68/Add.1 Annex Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on her visit to the United States of America I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur visited the United States between 31 October and 14 November 2023. She travelled to Washington D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Atlanta and met with federal, State and city government officials. 2. The Special Rapporteur sincerely thanks the Government for the invitation to visit and for the efforts of the Department of State to facilitate meetings with multiple interlocutors. The Special Rapporteur also thanks all the government officials she met with for their constructive and open engagement. The Special Rapporteur expresses her appreciation to all the civil society groups and individuals she met with. II. Background A. General background 3. The United States is a constitutional federal republic, comprising 50 states and one district, together with a number of commonwealths, territories and possessions. 1 Official data indicate the population of the United States as being 334,914,895, as at 1 July 2023. 2 According to census data, the ethnic breakdown of the population is as follows: white, 75.5 per cent; Black or African American, 13.6 per cent; Asian, 6.3 per cent; American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.3 per cent; Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 0.3 per cent; and two or more races, 3 per cent. The United States Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean persons of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin living in the United States who may be of any race or ethnic group. An estimated 19.1 per cent of the total United States population is Hispanic (as of 2023).3 B. Legal framework 4. At the constitutional level, the Fourteenth Amendment includes the Equal Protection Clause, which provides for equality before the law and protection against discrimination on the basis of race, colour or national origin. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for crime”. The Fifteenth Amendment establishes the right to vote regardless of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. The Nineteenth Amendment established women’s suffrage. 5. The United States has ratified some of the international human rights treaties, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.4 It does, however, maintain reservations to articles in these treaties and has not ratified the provisions that allow the relevant treaty bodies to assess individual complaints. Moreover, the United States has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the 1 2 3 4 2 See HRI/CORE/1/Add.49. United States Census Bureau, “QuickFacts: United States”, available at https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI125222. Ibid. Available from https://tbinternet.ohchr.org. GE.24-08027