Human Rights Council President Names New Member of Racial Justice Panel

GENEVA – The President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Omar Zniber (Morocco), has appointed Víctor Manuel Rodríguez Rescia of Costa Rica as member of the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement.

Mr. Rodríguez Rescia’s appointment follows the resignation of Juan E. Méndez of Argentina as member of the Expert Mechanism, which was created by the Human Rights Council to examine the “root causes of systemic racism in law enforcement and the criminal justice system… racial profiling and other human rights violations by law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent.”

Mr. Rodríguez Rescia is President of the Centre for Civil and Political Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, and of the International Institute for Social Responsibility and Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica. He is also a member of the General Assembly for the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights and of the Assembly of the International Commission of Jurists, and a visiting professor at various universities, including Columbia University and the University of Verona.

A former member of the UN Human Rights Committee, a body in which he was the Special Rapporteur for follow-up on communications, Mr. Rodríguez Rescia alsoserved as President of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture. He is also a former Deputy Secretary of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a former Director of the Human Rights Centre for the Americas.

Mr. Rodríguez Rescia has produced numerous publications on human rights, strategic litigation, access to justice and social responsibility. He has extensive experience as an independent consultant and as an evaluator of development and human rights projects. He holds a degree in international law from the University of Costa Rica.

Mr. Rodríguez Rescia joins Akua Kuenyehia (Ghana), Chair of the Expert Mechanism, and Tracie L. Keesee (United States of America) who were respectively appointed to the three-member panel in March 2024 and December 2021.

The Expert Mechanism is due to present its third annual report to the 57th session of the Human Rights Council in September 2024, and subsequently transmit it to the United Nations General Assembly. The theme of this report will be justice, accountability and redress.

The Expert Mechanism was established on 13 July 2021 by resolution 47/21 of the Human Rights Council in which it decided to establish a body to examine systemic racism and the excessive use of force, and other violations of international human rights law, against Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement officials worldwide.

This followed an urgent debate in the Human Rights Council in June 2020 on “current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests” following the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020.

Since its establishment, the Expert Mechanism has undertaken country missions to Brazil (27 November to 8 December 2023), the United States of America (24 April to 5 May 2023), Sweden (31 October to 4 November 2022) and Italy (2 to 10 May 2024).

ENDS

For more information, please contact the Expert Mechanism at: ohchr-emler@un.org

For media requests, please contact: Pascal Sim, Human Rights Council Media Officer, at simp@un.org; Todd Pitman, Media Adviser (Investigative Mechanisms), at todd.pitman@un.org; David Díaz Martín, Human Rights Council Public Information Officer, at david.diazmartin@un.org or Matthew Brown, Human Rights Council Public Information Officer, at matthew.brown@un.org