A/76/434 I. Introduction 1. Twenty years after the historic World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the global fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance remains as urgent and daunting as ever. The ongoing effects of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic illustrate this viscerally. 2. In the United States of America, Native American, Latino and Black people have a COVID-19 mortality rate that is double the rate of white Americans. 1 In Brazil, Afro-Brazilians are 1.5 times more likely to die of the disease. 2 In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, women of African descent and men of African descent were 4.3 and 4.2 times more likely to die of COVID-19, respectively, than white people, reflecting “the largest disparity of any ethnic group” (A/HRC/45/44, para. 37). Although studies have shown racialized impacts of the pandemic in Spain and Sweden, States throughout much of mainland Europe do not collect disaggregated data on COVID-19 outcomes, so racial and ethnic differences in mortality are rendered invisible. 3 On a transnational scale, wealthier countries in the global North have received the majority of COVID-19 vaccinations, while exploited and predominantly non-white countries in the global South disproportionally lag behind in access to life-saving vaccines. 4 3. Historically, the racial categorization of human beings was used dur ing European colonialism to distribute rights and resources among peoples (A/HRC/41/54, paras. 22–26). The concept of race was used to naturalize inequality and monumental injustice on biological grounds. At the Conference, States Members of the United Nations reiterated their rejection of “any doctrine of racial superiority”, along with theories that “attempt to determine the existence of so-called distinct human races”. 5 At the same time, throughout the Conference outcome document, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, Member States also sought to confront the reality that, as social constructions, race, ethnicity, national origin and other related categories continued to determine access to and enjoyment of fundamental rights. The blatantly disproportionate structural impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people of different racial, ethnic and national origins show the persistence of these and other categories as enforcing hierarchies among human beings and across borders. 4. At the Conference, the international community reached a historic and nearuniversal consensus on a blueprint for implementing human rights commitments in pursuit of the total elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xeno phobia and related intolerance. 5. In the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, Member States addressed racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as historically and structurally rooted phenomena. In that respect, the document falls within the tradition of pivotal anti-racism instruments such as the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the United Nations Declaration on __________________ 1 2 3 4 5 4/26 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Risk for COVID -19 infection, hospitalization and death by race/ethnicity”, COVID-19 database. Available at www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html. Paulo Ricardo Martins-Filho and others, “Racial disparities in COVID-19-related deaths in Brazil: Black lives matter?”, Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 31, No. 3 (January 2021), p. 239. Maria Melchor and others, “Migrant status, ethnicity and COVID -19: more accurate European data are greatly needed”, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, vol. 27, No. 2 (February 2021), p. 161. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “UN experts: G7 Governments must ensure vaccines’ access in developing countries”, 9 June 2021. Declaration, thirtieth preambular paragraph and para. 7. 21-15325