A/HRC/49/46/Add.1 Nations Commission on Human Rights, was one of the driving forces behind the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which symbolizes the historical legacy of the United States in setting up the foundation for the international human rights architecture. 12. Nevertheless, the United States has not signed and ratified any of the human rights treaties that would allow citizens to present individual complaints to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies and considers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as non-self-executing, with the result that international rights treaties are generally not recognized as rights in United States courts. 3 13. The legal landscape for the protection of human rights inside the country is also far from comprehensive or even coherent. While the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution grants full citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and the fifteenth amendment prohibits denial of the right to vote on the basis of race, there are exceptions for territories that are not States, and therefore hundreds of thousands of United States citizens, mainly minorities and indigenous peoples, do not fully enjoy equal rights with other Americans. 14. Moreover, there is no national human rights legislation nor a national human rights mechanism to ensure that the population can enjoy the full range of human rights generally recognized in international law. While the Bill of Rights, incorporating the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, provides important human rights protections, including the freedom of speech, religion, peaceful assembly, liberty and security and fair trial, it is, at best, an incomplete amalgam, guaranteeing only certain rights: some State constitutions go much further in terms of human rights protections. There have, however, been significant and hardwon gains in the area of human rights, mainly achieved during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 15. In the absence of comprehensive legal human rights protections, the most marginalized individuals and communities, which tend to be minorities, are often the most vulnerable. According to a report on the uninsured population, in 2019, the share of African Americans without health-care coverage was 9.7 per cent, while it was just 5.4 per cent among whites.4 The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has exacerbated inequalities between have and have nots: data as at 20 November 2021 show that hospitalization rates for indigenous, Black and Hispanic and Latinx minorities were significantly higher than for whites.5 In addition, the “racial wealth divide” between the white majority and the African American and Hispanic and Latinx minorities has been on the rise in recent decades: the median Black family has $24,100 in wealth and the median Hispanic and Latinx family has $36,050 in wealth, compared to $189,100 in wealth owned by the typical white family – a gap that has been increasing since 1989.6 Similar patterns of inequality can be observed in education and incarceration rates and are reflected in a multitude of other data. There is a huge overrepresentation of minorities among the poorest Americans, as well as a dramatic underrepresentation of minorities in the halls of power and authority. In the judiciary, the proportion of minorities, such as Black, Asian, Hispanic and Latinx and Native Americans, 3 4 5 6 4 Report of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America (A/HRC/33/61/Add.2), para. 10. J. Tolbert, K. Orgera and A. Damico, “Key facts about the uninsured population”, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 6 November 2020, see https://www.kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-aboutthe-uninsured-population/. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, per 100,000 people, around 1,500 indigenous, 1,106 Black and 891 Hispanic and Latinx people have had COVID-19 symptoms serious enough to require hospitalization, compared to 577 whites (see https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html). Survey of Consumer Finances, 1989–2019, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, see https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Net_Worth;demographic:racecl4 ;population:all;units:median;range:1989, 2019.