The United Nations (UN)’s Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Committee has raised serious concerns and criticised policy discriminatory policies like the NRC in Assam, and the alleged abuse, torture, extrajudicial killings, and stripping of citizenship of the most marginalised communities in the country.
In its report released Tuesday, August 25 in Geneva, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has, first and foremost, criticised the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, and raised concerns about the subjecting of Bengali-speaking Muslims to “systematic and structural racial discrimination”.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has published findings on India first time after 2007, after 19 years, and urged the Indian government to address discrimination, hate crimes: this UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) evaluates every country on the basis of its implementation, or not, of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The CERD Committee has therefore called for the suspension of the NRC and urged New Delhi to review its legislative framework, and “urgently address discrimination, hate speech, and hate crimes against Rohingya, Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants, and asylum-seekers”.
Interestingly, the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process was also called out in the observations, with the committee raising concern that Bengali-speaking Muslim voters were reportedly disproportionately impacted in West Bengal and Assam.
The “concluding observations” on the combined twentieth and twenty-first periodic reports of India raised wide-ranging concerns over caste discrimination, attacks on minorities, shrinking civic space, racial profiling, the treatment of migrants and the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in India.
“The Committee was gravely concerned about reports of large-scale violations perpetrated by law enforcement officials against ethnic and ethno-religious groups, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, including Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, particularly Dalits, and non-citizens,” the press release has stated.
“These included racially motivated violence, excessive use of force, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary and prolonged detention without due process, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence.”
The Committee called on India to conduct prompt, thorough and impartial investigations into all such allegations and ensure accountability for those responsible.
Hence, the UN’s CERD Committee has called upon the Indian government to urgently address discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes against Rohingya, Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum-seekers.
The Committee urged the State Party to protect their rights, refrain from collective expulsions and ensure access to international protection in line with the principle of non-refoulement.
The Committee welcomed the submissions of the State Party and constructive dialogue that took place earlier this month on August 11 and 12 with Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General of India, leading the high-level delegation.
Despite this pushback from the Indian government, during the session, Stamatia Stavrinaki, Committee Expert and Country Rapporteur, said independent monitoring recorded over 1,300 anti-Muslim hate-speech incidents in 2025, including recurring rhetoric attributed to senior officials.
The delegation responded that legislation from 2023 criminalised acts amounting to hate speech and hate crimes. When offences were conducted against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, additional protections applied. Freedom of religion was a constitutional guarantee in India, the delegation added.
In the concluding observations, the Committee also highlighted the increase in law enforcement operations targeting Rohingya, Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum-seekers, particularly following the 2017 Home Affairs order and the April 2025 Pahalgam attack in Kashmir.
The Committee noted that the statistics provided by the State Party on scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and refugees are based on the results of the 2011 population census. It also notes the information provided by the delegation about the launch of the census in April 2026, after a five-year delay, which will collect data on caste and incorporate the principle of self-identification.
The CERD Committee remained concerned about the lack of disaggregated data on Indigenous / Tribal Peoples, ethnic and ethno-religious groups and non-citizens, such as migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons.
The Committee is also concerned that Bengali-speaking Muslims are categorised as “non-original inhabitants”, while noting the absence of a clear definition of this category in the legislative framework, and are reportedly subjected to more rigorous standards compared to other categories in relation to the verification process of the National Register of Citizens.
The entire report released on August 25 may be read here.
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