A/HRC/42/59 higher level of education. One of the primary reasons for not reporting acts of racial discrimination was the notion that no action would be taken against the perpetrators. Another significant finding was that homeownership by people of African descent was significantly less than the average. 35. The last speaker on the panel, Lilla Farkas, a Senior Legal Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Group, spoke about the situation of data collection in the European context. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and several related institutions had been undertaking research on equality and had produced data on hate crimes, Afrophobia and ethnic minorities. However, the political context, including among minorities, was not conducive to the collection of data on ethnicity. While a number of minority groups had been officially recognized, people of African descent were yet to be recognized. Anti-racism work within the European Union was generally addressed through the migrant integration framework and the Roma integration framework, resulting in gaps in addressing inequalities pertaining to people of African descent. Legally, data collected in the European Union was based on national origin and on the specific history of each of the countries and their relation with Africa. Moreover, data on racial origin, when collected, was seldom based on self-identification. Agencies responsible for gathering statistics, such as the United Nations Statistics Division, Eurostat and national equality bodies, also needed to review their data collection methods to include disaggregated data. 36. During the interactive discussion, Mr. Gumedze asked how Member States could be encouraged to collect data that would inform policy changes to benefit people of African descent. Mr. Balcerzak stated that soft law and recommendations could be considered a way forward, while introducing stronger obligations would likely require a treaty and might not be realistic. He added that regional initiatives might be a better way to address the issue. Mr. Reid asked Mr. Bell if black people were arrested at higher rates than the average in all regions of the United Kingdom. Mr. Bell replied that there was no pattern. Areas with low concentrations of black people also exhibited higher arrest rates for black people. Ms. Shepherd, responding to a question from Ms. Latcheva, said that historical black populations had not been included in the study. 37. The fourth panel focused on people of African descent in North America. The first speaker in the panel, Ms. Day, focused her presentation on racial justice in the North America region and specifically how data could be used to identify areas of injustice. She advocated for public access by civil society to government data sets that might help in identifying racial violence and racial terrorism and allow for civil society input into formulating solutions to mitigate those challenges. There was a recent trend by some Governments to remove access to or to completely delete data sets that were vital to addressing racial discrimination. One such example was climate change data, which civil society no longer had access to, although the effects of climate change disproportionately impacted people of African descent. Another area of concern was the recent implementation of automated systems and artificial intelligence that were designed primarily for white people and thus might have an adverse impact on people of African descent. For example, automated vehicles were 10 per cent less likely to recognize people of African descent as humans, thereby exposing them to undue risk and endangering their lives. She also highlighted the failure of facial recognition technology to recognize people of African descent and their correct gender, which would result in further dehumanization. 38. Karen Thompson of the World Council of Churches spoke on the challenges of being a person of African descent in North America. In 2018, out of 1,166 persons killed by police in the United States 25 per cent were people of African descent, while the total population of people of African descent in the United States totalled only 13 per cent. The same disparity regarding police actions against people of African descent had also been witnessed in Toronto, Canada, where only 8.2 per cent of the population were people of African descent, while 7 out of 10 cases of fatal shootings by the police involved the death of a person of African descent. Racially motivated punishment was not only limited to modern police forces but could also be seen at the preschool level. Children of African descent constituted 16 per cent of the preschool population, yet they disproportionately represented 40 per cent of all preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school 9