Human Rights Watch submitted this statement to inform the Human Rights Committee’s understanding of the US government’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Left unchecked, Lebanon’s sectarian dynamics have spread like a cancer across public administrations. Today, the simplest public appointment is subject to sectarian horse-trading with the predictable outcome that qualifications are rarely the main selection factor. Take the recent appointment of a six-member committee to oversee and regulate the oil and gas sector. Instead of focusing on expertise, the government focused on ensuring that the appointees came from the following six communities: Shia, Sunni, Druze, Maronite, Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. Tough luck for any oil expert who may belong to the other 12 religious communities recognized in Lebanon.

On November 21, 1995, the EU and US brokered the Dayton peace agreement, putting an end to the three-and-a-half-year bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The agreement failed to tackle the division that the war had wrought, though, instead establishing a loose federation along ethnic lines. The hope was that in time, as wounds healed, and with the political, military and economic support of the US and EU, a country that fully respected equality and other human rights would emerge.

We write to provide our support for your initiative to create special police units to address racist violence. We take this opportunity to share our observations on the draft decree and to recommend the crucial steps we believe are necessary to ensure these units are effective in curbing the alarming phenomenon of xenophobic violence in Greece.