Following complaints of racist treatment at the border, a group of human-rights lawyers is pressing the United Nations to do more to protect Black people and other racial and ethnic minorities fleeing Ukraine.

Lawyers for the family of George Floyd, including civil-rights attorney Ben Crump and international human-rights attorney Jasmine Rand, wrote to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday, urging the organisation to take action in the wake of reports that border guards and others in Ukraine were preventing Africans and other racial minorities from leaving the country. The letter calls on the United Nations to issue executive orders mandating states to treat people of colour fairly and admit them at the same rate across borders.

"In Ukraine, people of African heritage and Black people are experiencing two wars: one waged by Russians and the other waged against them by racism," Rand stated. She claims that reports on social media and video demonstrate a double standard of treatment, which she describes as an example of institutional racism. "These are war crimes done on top of being in the middle of a conflict." This is essentially the continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement. In times of war and peace, we must ensure that Black lives are valued."

The group "shall work as a collective to hold any government committing war crimes on the basis of racial discrimination accountable before international tribunals accountable," according to the letter, which is also signed by lawyers from the United Kingdom, Kenya, Nigeria, and Jamaica.