A/HRC/45/44 78. Remote learning and educational stopgaps during the pandemic have been inequitable. When schools closed, many students disappeared. In the United States, 20,000 (predominantly African-American) children in Detroit had no contact with anyone in school between March and July 2020. In the United States, this is systemic and national: the non-profit College Board, which administers standardized testing, suggested that a student sit for rigorous Advanced Placement exams in the street outside a McDonald’s restaurant.56 The case of a girl of African descent detained for failure to complete school work during the pandemic is a particularly serious example of disparate treatment and structural racism. B. Recommendations 79. The Working Group recommends that States: (a) Look specifically at the impact of systemic racism in policing, health care, COVID-19 pandemic policy and other areas of discretionary decision-making on communities of African descent, and explicitly strive to disable taxonomy that obscures or minimizes that impact; (b) Prioritize human rights, equality and racial equity, even in times of emergency, and take measures to mitigate the impact of racial bias when decisions are made under stress or time pressure; (c) Prioritize vaccines for essential workers, including in particular frontline workers in health care and home health aides, carers and others enabling widespread quarantines and who continue to take a disproportionate risk; (d) Launch campaigns to dismantle stereotypes and to dispel social beliefs that people of African descent may be responsible for community spread of COVID-19; (e) Where people of African descent have experienced disproportionate abuses of authority by law enforcement, review applicable law, practices and policies to determine which reforms lead to future equitable outcomes; (f) Provide documentation allowing essential workers, including migrants, to travel to and from work unimpeded, while ensuring that migrant populations should receive equal social service assistance; (g) Remove legal barriers to video recording or disseminating law enforcement conduct publicly. 80. The Working Group also recommends that stakeholders build in reflection requirements to decrease biased decision-making. Unfettered discretion drives institutional racism, even among highly trained and educated personnel. One effective countermeasure to unconscious bias is to build reflection into decision-making, giving less license to the reactive parts of the brain: a mindset of reflection, rather than reaction. 81. Data disaggregated by race should be collected and analysed with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, including on the enforcement by States of COVID-19-related restrictions. 82. States should reduce prison populations and relocate migrants from detention centres to protect their health and dignity, in accordance with international human rights standards. They should ensure that people of African descent in detention have access to the same standard of health care as is available in the community, regardless of citizenship, nationality or migration status. 83. The Working Group recommends that the United Nations Organization continue to monitor States’ compliance with and implementation of international 56 Stephanie Sun, “Taking an AP test outside McD’s: The low-income student’s predicament”, New York Daily News, 18 May 2020. 17