Is it time for a European Convention against Racial Profiling?
| Published date | 01 September 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09240519241274846 |
| Author | Karin de Vries |
| Date | 01 September 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Column |
Is it time for a European
Convention against Racial
Profiling?
Karin de Vries
Utrecht University, Netherlands
Abstract
Four years after the murder of George Floyd and the global Black Lives Matter protests, racial pro-
filing not only remains prevalent in law enforcement practices in- and outside Europe, but takes on
new forms in thewake of technological developments enabling largescale data analysis and the use of
algorithmic risk profiles. A few years ago, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) first dealt
explicitly with the issue of racial profiling in the twin cases of Basu v. Germany and Muhammad
v. Switzerland. More recently, the ECtHR held in Wa Baile c. Suisse that Switzerland had violated
the prohibition of discriminationby subjecting the applicant to racial profiling at Zürich train station,
as part of a police action to apprehend persons without a valid residence permit.
1
While these judg-
ments, especially in Wa Baile, go some way towards securing international State accountability for
racial profiling, they also illustrate the difficulties of fighting such profiling as a form of structural dis-
crimination under the ECHR. Meanwhile other human rights bodies, at the European and inter-
national levels, have both acknowledged the structural nature of racial profiling and published
numerous policy guidelines and recommendations for positive State action to ensure non-discrim-
inatory law enforcement. Yet, to date all of these instruments remain at the level of soft law. Despite
the ECtHR’s recent efforts, European human rights law thus does not impose legal obligations on
States to actively prevent and combat racial profiling. This column signals this gap, and considers
some of the pros and cons of adopting a European Convention against Racial Profiling.
Keywords
Racial profiling, racial discrimination, structural discrimination, positive obligations, European
Court of Human Rights
Corresponding author:
Karin de Vries, Utrecht University, Netherlands.
E-mail: k.m.devries@uu.nl
Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribu-
tion of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open
Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
1. Wa Baile c Suisse App nos 43868/18 and 25883/21 (ECHR, 20 February 2024).
Column
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2024, Vol. 42(3) 225–232
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09240519241274846
journals.sagepub.com/home/nqh
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