On February 20, 2008, the Human Rights Network (HRN) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that the US consistently engaged in systematic racial discrimination. The report concluded that the US had failed to implement its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) since adopting the treaty in 1994. The report cited the slow federal disaster response to Hurricane Katrina as evidence of discrimination against minority groups at a national level. The report was released one month after a HRW investigation revealed that African-American youths generally received harsher sentences than Caucasian youths for the same criminal offenses in the US.

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