A/HRC/49/46 needed implementation of these rights and protections. He also invited participants to seize the opportunity provided by the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities in 2022 to relaunch attention and efforts towards the very core of the premise and promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” 32. On 12 November 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, was an online panellist with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and OSCE High Commissioner Kairat Abdrakhmanov. The event, organised in collaboration with the UN Office in Geneva, focussed on the effective participation of minorities in economic life as a strategy for conflict prevention. The Special Rapporteur called for much more needed focus on enhancing multilateral and other efforts in regards to the participation of minorities in the economic sphere because of the limited attention to minorities, and indigenous peoples, being increasingly left behind and discriminated in economic and other areas of participation, in part because of growing global inequalities as well as disturbing leaps of hate speech, xenophobia and majoritarian demagogy and intolerance. He also decried the widespread omission of minorities in SDG indicators and measures, thus largely leaving out minorities since ‘those who are not counted, do not count’. 33. On 22 November 2021 the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, gave a press conference at the end of his two-weeks mission to the United States of America, from 8-22 November. He urged the US government to overhaul legislation to prevent increasing exclusion, discrimination and hate speech and crimes against minorities, indicating that the legal landscape for the protection of human rights is far from comprehensive or coherent. He also indicated that recent years have seen these deficiencies in human rights and the phenomenal growth of hate speech in social media, growing inequalities between have and have nots, often minorities and indigenous peoples, creating toxic conditions and an unhealthy pandemic of the mind, a poisoning of individual minds and society in many parts of the country. 34. On 23 November 2021 the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, was a keynote panellist for the launch of the comprehensive #TravellerHomesNow Monitoring Report, as well as the annual meeting of the Galway Traveller Movement. The launch, organised by the National Travelers Women’s Forum and the #TravellerHomesNow campaign team, addressed the continuing unacceptable conditions under which Travellers are still allowed to live, as well as mapping progress made in #TravellerHomesNow campaign from 2017- 2021 using a human rights framework. 35. On 26 November 2021 the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, said the opening words and participated in a meeting of a minority global consultation group on future direction and focus for the 2022 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. 36. On 1 December 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Dr Fernand de Varennes addressed online a panel on the Minority issues and universality, organised by the Geneva Human Rights Platform and the Geneva Academy. He pointed out that the principle of ‘universality’ is at times used in states in the sense that majoritarian cultural and other preferences are deemed to be ‘the norm’, with those of minorities as ‘outside the norm’ and thus in opposition to the universal and equal application of human rights standards, whereas in reality international standards are ‘agnostic’ in terms of cultural and similar approaches. Majoritarian impositions are differences of treatment which can themselves be discriminatory if they have disproportionate or unjustified impact on the different cultural preferences of minorities, rather than minorities seeking ‘exceptional or special treatment’ from universal standards. 37. On 2 and 3 December 2021, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Dr Fernand de Varennes hosted the 14th UN Forum on Minority Issues, held in a hybrid format because of COVID health measures in Geneva. Some 650 participants registered for the two-day event – the largest number in the history of the UN Forum, to hear expert panellists from all regions 23