Endemic racism against Africans is increasingly being championed by Artificial Intelligence bias and police discrimination.
Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief has warned that racial discrimination continues to shape access to jobs, healthcare, housing and justice for Africans and people of African descent.
Türk said systemic racism was being reinforced by institutions, economic inequalities and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, warning that historical injustices continued to influence who holds power and who is excluded from opportunities.
“Artificial intelligence and other technologies, and we have been very vocal about this, are already reproducing human biases. If we are not careful, they could deepen systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent,” Türk said in a keynote address to a high-level dialogue on reparatory justice in Geneva on Thursday.
He also raised concerns about policing and criminal justice systems, saying police in different regions were several times more likely to use force against people of African descent, who are also disproportionately represented in prisons in many countries.
“The demographic composition of prisons is a signal of who we are excluding,” he said.
Türk argued that the consequences of slavery, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism extended beyond historical grievances, continuing to influence economic opportunity, political representation and access to essential services.
He cited persistent poverty, discrimination in employment and housing, unequal treatment in healthcare and the underestimation of students’ abilities in schools as examples of racism experienced in everyday life.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also linked historical exploitation to present-day global economic inequalities, noting that many developing countries, including former colonies, faced unsustainable debt that constrained investment in domestic priorities.
He called for reforms to the international financial architecture to ease debt pressures and give African countries a greater voice in decisions affecting the global economy.
Türk said reparatory justice should not be understood solely as financial compensation, but as a broader process of acknowledging historical wrongs, addressing their continuing consequences and preventing future discrimination.
“Reparatory justice takes many forms and must not be confused with financial compensation alone,” he said.
