Racism 'entrenched' in development institutions, UNAIDS chief says

When George Floyd, a Black man from Minnesota, was killed in police custody two years ago, it triggered something of a reckoning over racism in global development.

But did that change things?

“These are early days,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, told Devex at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

“We've had racism with us for 500 years. It was an idea that was created to justify slavery,” she said. “It's entrenched in the institutions we have."

While senior United Nations leaders came together in the wake of Floyd’s killing on May 25, 2020, and its secretary-general created a task force to tackle racism at the institution, the resulting action plan has yet to see much movement, Byanyima said.

Listen to "Episode 2: Interview with Adva Saldinger and Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS" on Spreaker.

“The United Nations itself, as a structure, was created when the concept of inequality was accepted. So we still have to fight,” she said, adding that many African countries were colonies when the organization was created.

While several individual U.N. agencies have taken action, UNAIDS has made anti-racism part of its organizational culture, and each of its units must develop a plan for addressing racism. The agency also created tools to help people analyze and identify unconscious bias, Byanyima said.

One clear example of how racism remains a problem is the global response to COVID-19, which she described as racist and sexist. From the unequal distribution of vaccines for many people of color to beliefs that Africans couldn’t produce a vaccine, much of the response has been affected by racist attitudes.

Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who was convicted of murdering Floyd, was sentenced in 2021 to 22.5 years in prison.