A/HRC/42/59 suspension according to a recent study by the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. The environment for people of African descent in North America had become extremely stressful, which had resulted in a higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder in the African-American community compared with their white counterparts. 39. Yeshimabeit Milner, co-founder of Data for Black Lives, spoke on the vital role of data with regard to the safety and security of people of African descent. Data had recently exposed a disturbing trend in which children of African-American descent were three times more likely to die before their first birthday than white children. Inadequate education and training provided by hospitals to young mothers of African descent was responsible for that disparity. That trend could not have been identified if data on the situation of children of African descent born in the United States had not been collected and analysed. Another recent trend that was severely disadvantageous for people of African descent was for governments to rely on automated algorithms as a tool to generate solutions. The objective function of those algorithms incorporated the biases that existed as a result of historical injustices and the values of the programmers. Those biases then translated into algorithms that exhibited racial discrimination. 40. Mr. Murillo Martínez addressed the growing challenges in the use of artificial intelligence with regard to racial discrimination against people of African descent. He provided several examples of concerns around the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence and of bias in technological advances, such as facial recognition, and software used in the criminal justice sector in certain countries. At its next session, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would be debating a draft general recommendation on racial profiling, which would examine ethical aspects of cybersecurity and would seek to provide guidelines to prevent and sanction racial bias in artificial intelligence. In relation to the proposed general recommendation, he called for submissions to the Committee, among others, of the criteria that companies should apply in preventing racial bias in the programming and use of algorithms; notable examples of artificial intelligence-related racial discrimination; examples of research and best practice in the prevention of or response to racial bias stemming from artificial intelligence; and ethical aspects of machine learning and relevant criteria to ensure understanding and transparency in the programming process pertaining to issues of race. 41. During the interactive discussion, the representative of the United Kingdom commented on artificial intelligence and algorithmic bias and the risks they presented within the criminal justice system. Speakers asked if there were any other countries that could be learned from with respect to algorithmic bias. Mr. Murillo Martínez noted that Germany had had a successful experience in eliminating racial bias in algorithms. In Germany, there were generalized measures of training algorithms so that the bias could be corrected to avoid harmful consequences. A main challenge was the independence of algorithms after they might have been programmed to express racial bias. Mr. Sunga asked Ms. Milner to provide more information regarding the 2020 United States Census and how the census could be reconfigured better. Ms. Milner stated that since it was the first census that would be fully online, there were now issues around security and privacy that had to be taken into account. Moreover, she discussed the need to mobilize people to take part in the census. A civil society representative asked Ms. Milner to provide more information about infant mortality. Ms. Milner said that research suggested that the aggressive targeting of black mothers by the infant formula industry and the overuse of caesarean sections might contribute to higher infant mortality for black infants. The use of midwives or doulas and more natural methods for childbirth and child-rearing might mitigate the disparity. In response to a question from the representative of Haiti on the role of the church in seeking racial justice, Ms. Thompson stated that an increasing number of African Americans were leaving the church – often to discover ancestral religious practices – while there remained many young leaders in the church who were agitating for racial justice and often received less publicity. She also acknowledged that the church was not exempt from the past, and that it had amassed a lot of wealth from enslavement. 42. The fifth panel focused on the mapping of people of African descent in Asia and other parts of the world. The first speaker, Mr. Sunga, shared the challenges due to the lack of data availability in the Asian region. He strongly urged Asian States to do more with 10