E/CN.4/2006/16 page 11 The need to promote a dual strategy in combating racism: a political and legal strategy to combat its political, economic and social manifestations and expressions, and an intellectual and ethical strategy to eradicate its deep roots linked to value systems, identity constructs, the recording and teaching of history, and to education. II. CONTEMPORARY MANIFESTATIONS OF RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND RELATED INTOLERANCE 28. In this part of the report the Special Rapporteur wishes to draw the Commission’s attention to particularly alarming problems and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia. Such manifestations as Islamaphobia and the activities of neo-Nazi groups are dealt with in separate reports, the report on the question of the situation of Arab and Muslim populations in various parts of the world (E/CN.4/2006/17) and the report on political platforms which promote or incite racial discrimination (E/CN.4/2006/54), respectively. A. Multiculturalism and racism 29. The problem of multiculturalism, its recognition, its management and its social, political and economic dynamic, is an underlying factor and the central issue in present-day crises in most of the regions of the world. The current crisis in the suburbs of France reveals the social and cultural depths of multiculturalism. The question of discrimination involves the multicultural process in two broad dimensions. The more visible, political, economic and social dimension, is characterized by the correspondence between the map of marginalization and the ethnic, racial or religious map of a multicultural society. But, at root, the identity issue in the multicultural process is illustrated by efforts to counter discrimination in the arenas of memory and value systems. This dimension, often overlooked by political leaders, reveals the need for a cultural and ethical strategy to eradicate racism and discrimination from multicultural societies. 30. Multicultural societies are the outcome of lengthy historical processes involving contact between peoples, cultures and religions. These encounters and intermixings have taken place within societies whose progressive development has, over the course of history, produced an organizational and operational framework, the nation. The organizing mechanism for this structure is generally based on a factor for recognition and cohesion and unity: the national identity. The correlation or link between two concepts, identity and nation, has resulted, through the processes of the construction of identify over time on the basis of history, memory, language, culture and religion, in the structuring of most modern societies by the political and legal concept of the nation State. The nation State concept has, in general, been intellectually and ideologically conceived and implemented politically as the expression of a national identity reflecting, depending on the political context, on an exclusive basis, an ethnic group, a religion or a culture. The central problem of most modern societies lies in the fundamental contradiction between the framework of the nation State, the expression of an exclusive national identity, and the dynamic of multiculturalization at work in those societies. 31. The cultural, ethnic or religious diversity of communities, groups and peoples brought together through various historical processes always results in an encounter between different identities. The circumstances attending that encounter, discovery, conquest or domination determine the way in which this diversity is perceived: attraction, rejection, fear, hostility. The