Global Impunity: How Police Laws & Policies in the World's Wealthiest Countries Fail International Human Rights Standards

Abstract

Every year, tens of thousands of people die at the hands of law enforcement worldwide.' George Floyd (United States), Daniel Chibuike (Nigeria), Agatha Felix (Brazil), Joao Pedro (Brazil), Breonna Taylor (United States), Anderson Arboleda (Colombia), Laquan McDonald (United States), Eric Garner (United States), Regis Korchinski-Paquet (Canada), Silvia Maldonado (Argentina), Diego Cagliero (Argentina), Yair L6pez (Mexico), Cddric Chouviat (France), Kumanjayi Walker (Australia)-the ever-growing list of lives lost to law enforcement reveals a dysfunction in the nature of policing that is global in scale. In the last year, demonstrators have gathered in cities-from New York to Tokyo, Lagos to Sydney, Cape Town to Paris-demanding reforms to the way police use and abuse force against the communities they serve.

In recognition of the global dimension and relevance of this problem and prompted by an appeal from family members of victims of police killings, the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) held an Urgent Debate in June 2020 on "racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests." 4 Testifying before the HRC, U.N. Special Rapporteur on All Forms of Racism, E. Tendayi Achiume, called attention to patterns of "militarization of the police, and the violent crackdown against peaceful protesters and journalists, in the United States," with parallels in many parts of the world, as evidenced by "[t]he massive transnational public outcry" and mobilization. The debate resulted in an HRC resolution deploring the "recent incidents of excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers against peaceful demonstrators defending the rights of Africans and of people of African descent" and calling on countries to "look into their manuals and guidelines used for training law enforcement officers with a view to identifying the proportionality of measures in the handling of suspects and other persons in custody .. "

Prior to the establishment of the international human rights system, the way States engaged in law enforcement in their own territories was understood as an entirely internal matter. The human rights system, however, was instituted to establish global standards on States' treatment of their own citizens, thus ensuring minimum safeguards for every human being regardless of the government they happen to live under. The use of force by State agents against civilian populations is now understood to fall squarely within the constraints set by the human rights system, as expressed in its foundational agreement, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as regional human rights treaties." These rights include the right to life, freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, the right to assembly and association, and the freedom from racial discrimination.