A/HRC/11/36 page 7 authorities should therefore start a process of reflection, based on the clear-cut commitments made in the outcome document, to assess national legislation and public policies. Civil society also has a fundamental role to play, not only by holding Governments accountable, but also by participating in policymaking and implementation. 14. More specifically, the Special Rapporteur believes that concrete yardsticks are needed to effectively measure the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference and to evaluate how responsive each Member State has been in fulfilling its obligations under these documents. Since the changes needed to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are long term, some concrete criteria are needed in order to evaluate the performance of States and their progress in achieving these commitments. International human rights mechanisms have a key role to play in this regard by constantly holding Member States accountable for their commitments and by monitoring their performance. 15. In this regard, and in view of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur will use the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference as a blueprint and theoretical framework for analysing issues relevant to his mandate during his country visits and in other regular activities. In particular, the Special Rapporteur analysed the commitments made by Member States under section 5 of the outcome document on the identification of further concrete measures and initiatives at all levels for combating and eliminating all manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, in order to foster the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and to address challenges and impediments hereto, including in light of developments since its adoption in 2001. A list of the action-oriented commitments made by Member States as well as some initial indicators to monitor performance to meet those commitments are set out in tables (see annex). While this framework will be used primarily for the fulfilment of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur urges Member States to adopt similar approaches when assessing their domestic efforts to implement the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference. The Special Rapporteur also reiterates his availability to assist Member States meeting these commitments in a spirit of cooperation and constructive engagement. III. POVERTY AND RACISM 16. During his activities over the past year, the Special Rapporteur analysed some of the links between poverty and racism, including those based on the body of empirical work and country visits carried out in his mandate since its inception, as well as on academic and policy-oriented research on this topic. The Special Rapporteur is convinced that a central dimension of the fight against racism lies in the overlap between two key social indicators: class and race or ethnicity. Throughout his mandate, he intends to examine this question in depth in order to provide sound and policy-oriented recommendations to Member States. The Special Rapporteur’s analysis in this section is therefore a work in progress, which will be gradually refined and expanded. 17. For many reasons, including the lack of ethnically disaggregated data collection, the links between race and poverty have yet to be fully elucidated. In particular, the Special Rapporteur recalls that there are no existing instruments for this type of data collection worldwide, which would allow cross-regional comparison of the levels of poverty among minorities. National data for many countries, however, unambiguously show that racial or ethnic minorities are