United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged on Tuesday a global fight against racism and discrimination following the “murderous act of police brutality” against George Floyd that has led to widespread protests in the United States and cities around the world.
In a letter to staff, Guterres said "the position of the United Nations on racism is crystal clear: this scourge violates the United Nations Charter and debases our core values.”
He added “the primacy of reason, tolerance, mutual respect” in the world is now being called “dramatically” into question by nationalism, irrationality, populism, xenophobia, racism, white supremacism, and different forms of Neo-Nazism.
He stressed a central problem is not only police brutality but “the difficulty of many authorities to deal with diversity,” starting with so-called profiling.
He called for all police forces to be fully trained on human rights, adding that “many times police brutality is the expression of the frustrations of the police officers themselves, as well as of the lack of adequate psycho-social support to them.”
