A/HRC/49/46 as special rapporteur on minorities, the nature and challenges to the implementation of the human rights of minorities, as well as the regression of the protection of these rights in areas such as statelessness, hate speech in social media, and in relation to teaching in the languages of minorities. 26. On 27 October 2021, the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, was the inaugural speaker for the Second Congress of the POCLANDE International Network (People, Cultures, Languages and Development) held at the Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. The Special Rapporteur spoke on the importance of sustainable development being sensitive to and taking into account local languages, cultures and populations, and why a human-centred approach to the SDGs needed to integrate more fully and accommodate the human rights of minorities, and particularly their languages and cultures, and the impact this could have in strengthening the participation of minorities in social and economic development and in society in general. 27. On 3 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Dr Fernand de Varennes, gave the keynote speech for the roundtable conference on “Respect for the right of people with hearing disabilities to education” organised by the OHCHR Regional Office for Central Asia, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the Office of the Ombudsperson of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, and the Regional Office of the OHCHR for Central Asia. Dr de Varennes explained why users of sign languages should be considered as members of a full-fledged, natural language, and why pedagogically the teaching of and use of sign languages in schools was the best way of ensuring deaf children received quality education and learning outcomes, as well as the failure to do so could constitute discriminatory practices in breach of international human rights standards. He also made concrete recommendations on what specific steps could be taken in Kyrgyzstan in this area. 28. On 4 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Dr Fernand de Varennes, discussed with a number of other experts and researchers at the European Academy (EURAC) in Bozen/Bolzano in Italy the challenges raised in a research project on the topic of “old” and “new” minorities, or on the integration of migrants on the regional level in Italy, specifically the province of Bolzano/Bozen and the region of Trentino AltoAdige/Südtirol. 29. On 4 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Dr Fernand de Varennes, was a panellist for the webinar on ‘Realizing Equal Nationality Rights for All’ organised by the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights and the World Council of Churches’ Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA). The event marked the seventh anniversary of the UNHCR’s #Ibelong Campaign to eradicate statelessness and the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. While the Special Rapporteur commended the organisations involved in successes to eliminate statelessness in gender discrimination cases against women and their children, and for Kyrgyzstan for having taking steps to eradicate it in the country, he warned that statelessness may have actually increased significantly from 10 million in 2014 to about 15 million in 2021, in large part because of insufficient focus and recognition on minorities such as the Rohingya in Myanmar and Muslim and Bengali minorities in India as the main victims of deliberate measures to exclude them from citizenship in a number of countries. 30. On 8 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, started his two-weeks mission to the United States of America, the first special procedures independent expert to conduct such as mission to the country since 2017. After initial meetings with high-level federal officials and civil society organisations in Washington DC, both in person and virtually, the Special Rapporteur met with territorial officials in Guam, as well as civil society organisations, including from the Chamorro community, on 11, 12 and 13 November 2021. 31. On 12 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, was the online keynote speaker for the European Language Equality Network’s annual general meeting being held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In his message, the Special Rapporteur highlighted the importance of countering a growing trend in Europe of disregard towards the human rights of minorities, and the need to build upon gains made in the 1990s for mechanisms and instruments to protect minorities in order to assure the much- 22