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Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

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The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention adopted and opened for signature and ratification by United Nations General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) December 21, 1965, and which entered into force January 4, 1969. As of November 2006, it has been ratified by 173 nations and a further five have signed it.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination oversees the implementation of the Convention. It is one of seven UN-linked human rights treaty bodies.

In August 2007 the Cornish Stannary Parliament applied to the European Court of Justice to annul the decision of the Council of Europe to introduce a six-year Fundamental rights and citizenship programme because it did not incorporate the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Incompatibility of the treaty with national constitutions and human rights

A meeting of non-governmental organizations, held in parallel with the World Conference against Racism 2001, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, demanded that U.S. drop its reservations and "comply" with the treaty. Per the Supremacy Clause of Article Six of the United States Constitution, which does not permit treaties to override the Constitution, the U.S. has attached a reservation to its 1994 ratification of the treaty noting that it did not accept treaty requirements that were incompatible with the Constitution of the United States. The U.S. Department of State had noted specifically that the treaty's restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly were incompatible with the guarantees of such freedoms incorporated into the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The United States is far from the only such country to note incompatibilities with human rights and add reservations stating that the treaty is subject by its Constitution. Incompatibility of the treaty with national constitutions, including the freedoms of assembly and speech guaranteed by those constitutions, is also noted by Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, France, Guyana, Jamaica, Japan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Switzerland, and Thailand. Several, including France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malta, Moncao, Nepal, the United Kingdom, note that they consider the provisions of the treaty to be restricted by and subject to the freedoms of speech and assembly that are set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Fonte notes that in order to comply with the interpretation of this treaty that was created by the NGOs at the NGO Forum, the United States would have to "turn its political and economic system, together with their underlying principles, upside down — abandoning the free speech guarantees of the Constitution, bypassing federalism, and ignoring the very concept of majority rule, since practically nothing in the NGO agenda is supported by the [U.S.] electorate", stating that these NGOs were "a new challenge to liberal democracy" that contested the principles of individual rights, democratic representation, and national citizenship, along with the contesting the very idea of a liberal democratic nation-state.

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