Today, the ICJ and other rights groups submitted an intervention to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, recalling the international human rights of non-citizens. Over the next two days, the Committee will hold a thematic debate on the subject of non-citizens and discrimination.
In their submission, the ICJ, Friends World Committee for Consultation (Quakers), Human Rights Watch and the International Catholic Migration Commission stress the importance of the prohibition of racial discrimination for non-citizens, particularly in the current political context, where measures to combat terrorism all over the world have disproportionately affected non-citizens.
They also highlight some specific violations to which different groups falling under the broad category of non-citizens – such as migrant workers, stateless persons, refugees and asylum seekers, and others – are exposed, and which the Committee should address in a General Recommendation on non-citizens.
The ICJ has also submitted a written intervention on the rights of non-citizens in the administration of criminal justice to the Committee. Indeed, non-citizens face racial discrimination both when they are confronted to the criminal justice system as suspects or accused and when they are victims of crime.
The intervention therefore recalls the fundamental rights of fair trial, the rights to liberty and security of the person, the right to equality before the law and tribunals; it also stresses the importance to afford justice to non-citizens who are victims of crime, by taking into account their special situation at all stages of the criminal investigation and trial.”
Non-citizens and the Administration of Criminal Justice : Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (full text in English, PDF)