A/76/302 disproportionately devastating impact on people of African descent, including racial disparities in pandemic fatalities and negative health impacts, as well as the socioeconomic costs over time. 59. This period has also seen a particularly intense recognition of police violence against people of African descent globally. Popular protests have been met with State violence. Video evidence has been compiled of brutality and incidents of violence, including the use of tear gas and pepper spray, arbitrary arrest, detention and intimidation, physical assaults with batons, rifle butts or vehicles, attacks on journalists or legal observers, use of kettling to prevent civilians from leaving the site of a protest, and injury caused to minors. 60. The collection of data on COVID-19-related infection and mortality disaggregated by race, ethnicity and more should inform the elaboration of the policy responses to COVID-19. 61. Peaceful demonstrators and civil society advocates, including those supporting the widespread, transnational Black Lives Matter movement, experienced violent State responses, while nationalist and white supremacist groups received conciliatory and non-violent treatment by State actors, including in the face of violence and property destruction. 62. Deaths in police custody remain a matter of concern globally. Many cases arise from the wrongful use of restraint or from situations properly warranting mental health, rather than police, intervention. 63. Various forms of structural racism persist globally. Their relationship to health inequities is insufficiently studied. The human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health intersects and implicates other human rights, such as the right to information, the right to freedom and security of the person, the right to equality and non-discrimination and the right to bodily autonomy. 64. COVID-19 has revealed the urgency of ending the colonialism and racism embedded in the global health architecture, which has a disproportionate impact on Black and indigenous communities and communities of people of colour and th ose in the global South. In many parts of the world, challenges related to the realization of the right to health were rooted in slavery, colonialism, apartheid, xenophobia, Afrophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism, sexism and racism. Thus, any effort to reduce structural health inequities must challenge the distribution of power within society and empower individuals and groups to strongly and effectively advocate for their rights. For COVID-19 to truly come to an end, it must be stamped out in every country, for each person, around the world. 65. Despite significant advances in health care and technology over the past decades, racialized health inequities have been profound and persistent. Studies show that the chronic stress of living with daily racism is resulting in premature ageing (i.e. the “weathering effect”). Moreover, these are rarely discernible in the absence of data disaggregated by race. For example, it took many years to update protocols for the treatment of hypertension among people of African descent, and this was possible only with disaggregated data. 66. Distrust in the health-care system among people of African descent is a result of a historical legacy of centuries of neglect, abuse and exploitation, as well as measurable bias, inequality, inequity and discrimination at present. 67. Research has shown that health-care workers demonstrate racial bias, particularly under conditions of stress, that results in relatively positive attitudes towards white patients and conversely negative attitudes towards Black patients. 18/22 21-11641