A/69/318
the objective of monitoring the situation of marginalized groups, and the
development and evaluation of legislation, policies, practices and other
measures aimed at preventing and combating racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance, as well as for the purpose of determining
whether any measures have an unintentional disparate impact on victims. To
that end, it recommends the development of voluntary, consensual and
participatory strategies in the process of collecting, designing and using
information. The information should take into account economic and social
indicators, including, where appropriate, health and health status, infant and
maternal mortality, life expectancy, literacy, education, employment, housing,
land ownership, mental and physical health care, water, sanitation, energy and
communications services, poverty and average disposable income in order to
elaborate social and economic development policies with a view to closing the
existing gaps in social and economic conditions;
(c) Adopt domestic legislation on combating racial discrimination. Data
collection should result from explicit anti-discrimination laws that require data
in order to measure discrimination and formulate, implement and monitor
appropriate public policies, including special measures, pursuant to
international human rights standards;
(d) Adopt laws regulating the collection and processing of ethnic and
racial data that protect fundamental freedoms, including the right to privacy,
provide the necessary safeguards for protecting data from misuse, such as
racial profiling and negative monitoring, and ensure confidentiality of
information, in accordance with relevant regional and international standards,
in particular the Guidelines for the Regulation of Computerized Personal Data
Files concerning the legality, fairness, accuracy and relevance of data, purpose specification, interested-party access, non-discrimination, security, oversight
and penalties. The normative framework should be approved beforehand and
lay down the following minimum conditions: the person must give explicit
consent; the data collection must serve the public interest, namely, the fight
against racial discrimination; and the framework must be legally binding;
(e) Develop and identify quantitative and qualitative indicators for
promoting and monitoring racial equality and non-discrimination, taking into
account the methodology approved by the United Nations human rights treaty
bodies. 4
90. States, through their government bodies, as well as national statistics
institutes, human rights institutions and organizations for racial equality, in
conformity with their mandates, should:
(a) Include questions on the identities of people of African descent in all
relevant data-collection and disaggregation activities;
(b) Conduct prior research and contextualize the data system so as to
ensure that the data are culturally relevant and use appropriate terminology;
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4
14-59293
See report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on
indicators for promoting and monitoring the implementation of human rights (HRI/MC/2008/3).
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