 Cooper and welcome to the Cooper Union, what's happening with human rights around our world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii and Moana, New York. Today's episode, we're focusing on the international independent expert mechanism to advance racial justice and equality and law enforcement known as EMLR, a new UN process for rights. Aloha, it's great to be here today to meet with our guests. Kerry, can you tell us a bit about your background and the amazing advocacy that you do related to human rights and where you began on this journey for justice? I've been an international human rights lawyer for almost 18 years now, time flies. You know, I entered law school initially thinking that I wanted to do civil rights and then I took this course during my first year, this international law course. And that's where I really first learned about human rights law and I just completely fell in love with it and it was just full speed ahead. And you know, throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to live and work in different parts of the world and work on a range of human rights issues. And I feel like I've learned so much. It's so true. I never forget really those moments when you learn about really the civil society, the individuals that come together with initiatives to demand dignity for all people. And you see the UN Charter, which is important because for the first time it really appears that veil of sovereignty and said that everyone, everywhere on Earth has rights no matter where they're born. And then the exciting part about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights where world leaders are looking at never again and trying to end the scourge of war that begins in the minds and then the hearts of many people saying, what can we do? What kind of mechanisms can we create that reflect the movement of the time that demands justice for everyone? When you see what the UN has created since that Universal Declaration of Human Rights and those 30 articles, how does Emler fit into that tradition of coming up with transformative institutions, even though we're in a space that's still state-driven? Oh, so how does Emler... I mean, look, I guess I'm going to just comment on the UN mechanisms and processes in general. What's exciting about the UN mechanisms and processes is that they create an opportunity for governments to be held accountable by their peers. And that's so exciting, right? Just kind of theoretically and then obviously for the people out there in the world who are fighting for their rights. And then there are also limitations though, right? And particularly when it comes to powerful nations like the United States. So whereas, you know, we'll see the UN imposing sanctions, for example, on countries that the UN says are guilty of human rights violations. But that's never something that's that's ever happened to the United States. And who knows if that'll even ever happen in our lifetime? So those are some of the realities. So maybe you could share with us a bit of background then to that. So what was the impetus? We know we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We know we have these nine, ten human rights treaty bodies that cover an array of articles that guarantee rights in many fields of human rights that we both were intoxicated with in our university studies. And then we have the UN Commission on Human Rights that created many of those treaty bodies. And we now have this human rights council. Can you maybe share a bit about the impetus for the creation of Emler and how that went about and how civil society and other factors are able to play a positive role in creating this important international institution? Absolutely. Well, so as you know, the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020 was witnessed by the entire world on video. And, you know, I guess that's that's one of the sad benefits of having the internet, right, and having social media that, you know, this information just goes out to the whole world in a way that it simply couldn't happen, you know, 40 years ago. So Mr. Floyd's death that reignited public discourse on systemic racism and sparked one of the largest sustained mobilizations against racist police violence in history in June 2020. So the very next month, an international coalition of hundreds of organizations and individuals sent a communication to the UN Human Rights Council, really demanding that the UN convene a commission of inquiry to investigate racism and racist police violence in the US. So in an unprecedented move, the UN African group followed up on that request, also calling for this commission of inquiry to investigate racism and also for an urgent debate. So we learned from our contacts that the US pressured some countries to oppose a commission of inquiry. And, you know, yeah, this is what I was saying earlier that the US is very powerful. And so even within a body like the UN, it's it's just not easy to hold the US accountable, right? The Human Rights Council declined the request to convene a commission of inquiry, though it did task the UN High Commissioner on human rights with preparing a report on racism. The High Commissioner's report was delivered a year later and it contained a recommendation for the establishment of a new mechanism which would examine systemic racism against people of African descent within the context of law enforcement. So that recommendation is what led to the creation of Emler. And that's really valuable to share, because it really was 171 families of victims of police violence, as well as over 270 civil society organizations that spanned over really four dozen countries, putting that moral pressure on the UN High Commissioner and also pushing the Africa group as well to ensure the Human Rights Council had a role and to be effective. And you spoke briefly about Human Rights Council Resolution 43.1 and its goal of creating a new mechanism as it was quoted to further transformative change for racial justice and equality in the context. And this is some of the language that's so fascinating of law enforcement globally, especially where relating to legacies of colonialism in a transatlantic slave trade in enslaved African. So that's an important step as well. I think that that we can look at with Emler. One of the things that they did create, though, it also passed with investigating government's responses to peaceful anti-racism protests and all violations of international human rights law to contribute to accountability and reduce for victims. How about what happened on December 16th when the council presence announced the appointment of the three experts? And what was the initial reaction around those that are intended to serve on the international independent expert mechanism? OK, so let me talk a little bit about the experts. So Emler is composed of three expert members. The chair is former South African Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Macauro, who, you know, very sad to report she was involved in a car accident last month and she wasn't able to participate in the visit, though, you know, we're told that her condition is stable. The other two members of Emler are Juan Mendes from Argentina, who's a human rights professor and also a former UN special rapporteur on torture. And then the third member is Dr. Tracy Kizzi, who's from the US and who spent 25 years in the Denver Police Department and after retiring, served as the NYPD's deputy commissioner in training, then deputy commissioner on equity and inclusion. Dr. Kizzi is now co-founder of a research center called the Center for Policing Equity, which promotes police accountability and transparency. So I mean, I can't really speak for everyone. I think, well, definitely Justice Macauro. She's actually someone that I'd recommended because I was a part of a group that made recommendations for who should be appointed and she's someone that I recommended. And I was familiar with her work from the time that I spent in South Africa previously, so I was very excited. Her appointment, obviously, you know, Juan Mendes, his reputation also precedes him as a human rights professor, but significantly as a former special rapporteur and torture. So I think those were both very exciting appointments. Now, Dr. Kizzi, I think, well, two things. She was less well known to people in the human rights field and less well known or not known at all. And then on top of that, she has a law enforcement background. Right. So, I mean, like, there's no question that it gave some people pause and she's also American. And so, you know, one can imagine that this is someone that the U.S. made sure was placed, you know, on the mechanism. So I guess, you know, yeah. So just sort of thinking about what all that could mean. You know, we weren't really sure, but I have the opportunity to interact with Dr. Kizzi during the visit to the U.S. And I mean, I had a very positive interaction with her and I thought her interaction with civil society was also just very appropriate and very compassionate. We really appreciate that. And when you look at this creation of Emler, what it's trying to do is fill the gap that we see on the ground, that even though we have these human rights treaties and charter bodies, too often human rights violations are still taking place and people are not able to realize their fundamental freedoms and basic human rights. This really looks like a violation of Article 6, as well as Article 7 violation, that all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection. But we can see in the George Floyd video, but in numerous other ones, how this pattern persists and that we must do something about it. Maybe you could share with us a bit some of your experience with other human rights treaty bodies and how civil society organizes to make sure that they can demand inherent dignity. And also you were tasked with a unique role for the first time in history to really organize this visit. Can you share about the engaging experience about the process of organizing this visit and when it took place in the United States? Sure. Okay, let me start with the visit. So the visit took place from April 24th through April, I'm sorry, yeah, April 24th through May 5th. So the two week visit, Emler visited six cities in the US, DC, Atlanta, LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, and then New York. Their visit to DC, they actually started with DC and ended with DC was primarily to meet with the federal government. So they didn't have any engagement with civil society in Washington DC, but in the other five cities they engaged with civil society. In four of the cities they spent two days in each city, Minneapolis was the only city where they only spent one day. And in truth, a big part of visiting Minneapolis was because that's where George Floyd was murdered. So it was more symbolic. And so they only spent one day there. Now for the cities where they spent two days, I think as civil society, we definitely wanted to have a lot of their time. But well, we knew that their mandate does require them to meet with law enforcement and politicians that would have you. So I think we expected that, but initially they were proposing even a small amount, a very small amount of time out of one day, from the two days that they would be in a city. And so we had to really, really push back on that and say, no, the community is very excited to meet with you. There's so many people with stories to tell, so we need more time. So yeah, in each city we ended up spending, maybe about six to seven hours with them, except for Minneapolis where it turned out to be four hours. In each city I decided to structure the engagement as hearings. I thought a lot about what it would look like. I didn't wanna do something where, you've just got like the big organizations like ACLU and Human Rights Watch and what have you, sitting in a boardroom just telling them about their reports. I didn't see the value in that at all because first of all, these orgs, they already have access to the UN. It's easy for them to fight to Geneva and meet with these folks. And secondly, even like in Emler's mandate, they're supposed to be centering the voices of directly impacted people. So since they're coming to the US, I figured they're gonna hear directly from these people. So I structured the interaction as hearings and I set up steering committees for each city. And basically I invited organizations and activists within each city who had a record of engaging with people within the communities there on these types of issues. So I knew that they'd be able to easily say, yeah, let's get these folks to testify about this issue and that issue. And then so then, all right, we figured out, well, okay, we've got this amount of time with them. We've got the steering committee. And then from there, I worked with them to come up with issue areas that we wanted to cover. So for every single city, we were definitely gonna hear from families and victims of police violence because that's just a critical group to hear from always. But then depending on the city, there were other issues that were important. So like for New York, where I'm from, just right away, I could tell you that vikers was gonna be important, right? Or, and also stop and frisk was gonna be important to talk about. And then for Chicago, where people, so many people were impacted by police commander John Burge, all of these young people who were tortured, we were definitely going to have testimony from the survivors of torture and so on. And in LA, we held the hearings at the LA Community Action Network, which is actually housed on Skid Row. And we wanted to show the experts like that type of experience as well. And we had folks experiencing homelessness testify to them about their interaction with law enforcement, like how they're targeted and abused by law enforcement. So it really, Josh, what can I say? The hearings were incredibly powerful, so, so, so moving. And I think, and by the way, Juan Mendes and Tracy Kasey, they both said that just over and over in each city, how moved they were by the testimonies. And I can only hope that the report that comes out of this contains just really bold and revolutionary language. I don't know if that's gonna happen, but that's what I'm hoping for. We really appreciate, first and foremost, the detail to make sure that directly impacted people are at the forefront and heard. We do know that many larger NGOs do have amazing reports, but I think what you're showing and actually illustrating by the impetus and the initiatives that you set up in each city was to make sure that's a people-centered approach, making sure that the families who had endured the most are able to be heard the most by the people because their stories really translate to what they face, what we face at the hands of law enforcement. And so you also brought up Article 5 of the UDHR and torture. There's so many aspects of what was being said. And when we look at this international independent expert mechanism to advance racial justice and equality and law enforcement, you described each city where they went. Is there a story from one or two examples in those cities that really stood out, that you think you could feel that moment of collective humanity in the room when they heard that and everyone said, this is why we're here and this is why this can't happen to anyone else going forward? Do any of them stick out? Because I know when we were at the third report, the example by Terrence, a young man who was incarcerated, that really shifted the mood. It set the stage for everything. And I was wondering if Emler had some aspects that were similar that could give people a sense of what was going on in each of those cities with the amazing organization that you did to put them at the forefront and make sure their voices heard. Wow, okay. Do you mind if I give an example from a few cities? Because it, yeah. So first of all, sure. So first of all, Terrence, Mr. Wynne also testified for us in Atlanta to Emler. We decided to make Atlanta, we called it a Southern visit because the experts were really interested in the South but they knew they couldn't go everywhere. So we had people come from a few different states to Atlanta to testify. So Terrence testified about his experience in Angola. Let me tell you, when he got to the part of his testimony where he talked about it being so hot there, they didn't have, they didn't cool the prison and it was so hot that they would take water from the toilet and put it on the floor and lie on the floor to try to get cool. I mean, I think, yeah. I think another, this was actually from a family members in different places who lost their loved ones. I think just listening to their pain, especially when they talked about how the loss, the loss and the lack of accountability and of course, usually just like the horrible way that their loved ones were killed, how it affected them or others in their family so much that they created health problems for people. I remember one gentleman talked about his wife dying of a broken heart. Like she just developed all of these health issues and she died a few years later while she was trying to fight for justice for their son. And then another story that stands out for me is a gentleman in Minneapolis whose son was murdered by the police and the police entered the family home at two in the morning. You know, after killing the young man a couple of hours before, his family had no idea he'd been killed. So the police just burst into the house because they felt they needed to search for every reason. And you can just imagine two o'clock in the morning, everyone's sleeping, the parents are asleep, the three small children, one is young as four years old, all sleeping, police burst in, shouting, guns pointed and all of that. And, you know, they're just all scared, the police bound the wrist of the adults, you know, made everyone sit on the floor and then the four-year-old who's four years old, so very little and who also has Down syndrome and who was like scared and I think running and the police shouting at the kid and pointed the gun at the father, the father said that the police pointed the gun at the four-year-old who has Down syndrome. And I mean, I don't think I'll ever forget that story. Thank you so much. And those just give really a sense of the magnitude of what people are facing at the hands of law enforcement and why it's so concerning because it's not just one or two incidents, but you can really, I believe it shows when you look at all the cities where you brought people to then share their stories, how it's taking place everywhere and how we really have to think of a larger systemic reform and how we have to really have a human rights-based approach to looking at how we exist and how we move forward. One of the things I remember this weekend, I thought you gave an amazing speech looking at the Atlanta summit that was a human rights leadership, human rights city's leadership summit. You give the history of policing in the country. Can you share a bit of that history of policing and what was being said at Emler over and support one another? Sure. Okay, so it's just really important to take a look at the history of law enforcement in the US and how law enforcement routinely subjects people of African descent to policing, to control our movement in actions and meet out harsh punishment. So law enforcement targeting people of African descent, it doesn't date back 40, 50 years ago. It really began centuries ago with the establishment of the slave patrols where whites were tasked with catching enslaved people who would escape to freedom, right? And so the slave patrols, in addition to catching anyone who escaped, they would watch the enslaved people to try to figure out if people were planning to escape or if people were being defiant. And this continued until the end of the Civil War, then following the Civil War during the period of reconstruction, slave patrols were replaced by militia-style groups who were empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to the formerly enslaved people. These groups systematically enforced the black codes which were strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor wages, voting rights and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people. After the black codes were abolished, the Jim Crow laws quickly replaced them and the Jim Crow laws legalized segregation and inequality. The police departments established in the early 20th century and forced the Jim Crow laws and exerted excessive brutality on black people perceived as violating the Jim Crow laws. And so it's important to acknowledge the historical context in any attempt to understand the current situation in the US. And this is also why it's significant that Emler's mandate acknowledges the relevance of the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement of Africans. So it brilliant and it also shows a historic as well as a holistic approach and why human rights is so vital as we move forward in public policy that could begin to change the daily conditions for too many people. For everyone that was following Emler and those that are just learning about it, what are the next steps and what happens after the visit, Harry? Sure. All right, so the experts are going to write a report that's going to be shared with the UN Human Rights Council and the public in September of this year. And I encourage everyone to check the UN website for that. And also the organization that hired me to organize this part of the visit is called the UN Anti-Racism Coalition or UNARC. So it's unarc.org. Definitely visit the website. You can see some live stream, some recordings of the hearings, but we're going to be posting the report and any type of follow-up that we'll be able to do. We thank you so much. It really focuses on what we know about human rights that we have to focus on education first, then mobilization, then realization, but also what was so powerful about this Emler experience and you giving us insights behind the stage and seeing what happens with the personalities and more importantly, making sure that the voice of the people is loudly heard, they're in Geneva through this Emler process is that how all human rights are intersected. Article five, torture, Article six, equality for the law, Article seven. And this is just one example of how civil society and human rights defenders or as Rob likes to call people, us as civil society, human rights enforcers can ensure that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aren't just promises on paper, but really a guiding post or a North Star on where we need to move together to really have a better world where we understand our sense of solidarity where all of our rights are connected and we must coordinate campaigns to stand up for one another. Thank you so much for all that you do and look forward to following up at the Human Rights Council session in September, I believe under agenda item number nine. Josh, thank you so much for having me, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.