[JURIST] The US must do more to meet its obligations to fight racial discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [text], UN rights experts from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) [official website] said Thursday in a scheduled session to review US compliance with the treaty. Committee expert Linos-Alexander Sicilianos [official profile, PDF] said that police brutality against minorities continues to be a problem in the US, and that since Sept. 11, immigrants and refugees especially have been subjected to a broad range of human rights violations. Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch [advocacy websites] filed their own reports [CERD materials; JURIST report] with the panel, with the former expressing serious concerns about the "the discriminatory treatment of non-US nationals held by the US military in the context of the so-called 'war on terror.'"

CERD is charged with periodically reviewing the performance of the 173 countries that have signed and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The United States last appeared before CERD in 2001 [CERD concluding observations]. AP has more.