Anti-Racism at the United Nations

Racial injustice and inequality remain contested internationally, and the United Nations remains a prominent site for this contestation. In this essay, we describe the architecture designated by the United Nations to address racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance. We highlight recent normative and institutional innovations and their connection with older mechanisms and milestones. From our experience within this architecture, we reflect on shortcomings and dysfunctions that are built into it, and discuss pressing threats and challenges. We highlight the twenty-year-long, unprincipled opposition of members of the Western Europe and Other States Group (WEOG) within the United Nations to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), which they have used to block progressive efforts to dismantle contemporary and historic racial injustice. We also highlight recent successes within the architecture, noting remarkable, if tenuous, shifts in the normative framing of racism and racial injustice at the United Nations.