SUMMER 2021
26
Advancing Racial Equity Through the UN Sustainable Development Goals
The urgency for racial equity is a clarion call for the legal profession. As legal practitioners consider how best to support this global movement, the FBA Diversity and Inclusion (D & I) Committee collaborated with the UN Global Compact to develop a comprehensive Certified Program for law students studying throughout the U.S. to promote understanding and action in addressing systemic racism. The program contextualized these efforts within the UN Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDGs’) framework.
By Christina Bartholomew Christina Bartholomew is a London-based American attorney, university educator, and founder of Stories Evolved (www.storiesevolved.com), a sustainability training and education consultancy.
Offered free of charge over a period of three sessions, the program exemplified diversity in terms of race, age, gender, nationality, background, and focus areas. Co-badged along with the and the UN Global Compact Network UK, it highlighted practical avenues for lawyers to advance the cause of racial equity, either in public-sector work within government or non-governmental civil society organizations or in corporate work, either through a law firm or general counsel’s office. The program looked abroad, as well, to recent and pending human rights legislation as a means to inform and amplify the racial equity movement. Adopted in 2015 by every nation on the planet, the SDGs enshrine the enforcement of human
rights and the promotion of equality and rule of law, articulating an ambitious fifteen-year achievement timeframe. While it is national governments that have committed to these objectives, private sector action is also envisioned. Drawing from this universally accepted agenda offers a comprehensive and quantifiable framework for tackling the issues that continue to disproportionately impact minority and impoverished communities throughout the world. For lawyers to advance the cause of racial equity, they need to understand how these objectives and their underpinning principles can guide progress for governments, businesses, finance and civil society.
Public Sector and Civil Society The first session held on October 9, 2020 showcased careers in civil justice. Hon. Nannette Jolivette Brown, Chief Judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana moderated the event entitled How Lawyers Can Contribute to Civil Justice, and opened the program explaining that lawyers must seek an end to unjust practices and policies contributing to the systemic problems “embedded in the fabric of our nation.” A recent report compiled by the American Bar Association shows that minorities are badly underrepresented in the legal profession. Therefore, Judge Brown encouraged every member of the bench and bar to address this inequity, noting that it is an attorney’s obligation “to help our democracy evolve and improve so that we all live and thrive in the America our forefathers dreamed of and for which they planned.”
