African nations have prepared a draft resolution at the UN's top human rights body that singles out the US, and they would launch intense international scrutiny of systemic racism against people of African descent in the wake of recent high-profile killings of blacks by American police.

The draft text, a copy of which has been obtained by The Associated Press, could become the centrepiece for an urgent debate hastily scheduled for Wednesday for the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. It calls for a Commission of Inquiry — the rights body's most powerful tool to inspect human rights violations — to look into "systemic racism" and alleged violations of international human rights law and abuses against "Africans and of people of African descent in the United States of America and other parts of the world recently affected by law enforcement agencies" especially encounters that resulted in deaths.