A/76/162 2021, were urgently needed to more effectively combat structural racism and discriminatory practices and policies that can “leave behind” and exclude Afrodescendent minorities, among others. 29 However, Afrodescendants and other minorities are currently largely invisible, essentially “whitewashed”, from the data actually requested under all Goal indicators. 42. As the study in one submission provided to the Special Rapporteur for the present report points out, implementation of the 2030 Agenda is supposed to be “country-led”, and States could in theory adopt a more expansive and inclusive approach to target the most excluded and marginalized populations, in particular minorities and indigenous peoples, for measures specifically targeting those “left behind” and disaggregated indicators in their voluntary national reviews and other reports towards the review and follow-up of the 2030 Agenda. 30 The survey of the world’s 15 largest countries by population concluded that it was a “very disappointing picture”, since there were only a few exceptions: minorities and indigenous peoples were barely even mentioned at all, and usually only briefly in the reports from Brazil, Mexico, Canada and the United States of America. There were almost no substantive provisions on minorities or indigenous groups in the context of targeted actions or disaggregated data. 43. Similarly, the main conclusions above are confirmed in the fifth voluntary national reviews synthesis report prepared by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in its most recent iteration from 2020, covering 47 voluntary national reviews presented that year. 31 Misleadingly, however, it is claimed in the synthesis report that many voluntary national reviews included assessments of those who are considered at risk of being left behind, identifying groups such as ethnic minorities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons and stateless persons. While there are dedicated sections for indigenous peoples (five paragraphs: a very significant increase from the 2019 report) and LGBTI persons (the same as for indigenous peoples, five paragraphs, whereas there was only one in the previous report), minorities are again completely left out, as are stateless persons, who are only briefly mentioned in passing a few times. 44. Contradictorily, minorities and the stateless (who are overwhelmingly minorities) are in fact hardly mentioned in the synthesis report itself. The few references made include Finland, which is mentioned in the report for not allowing disaggregated data collection on the basis of ethnicity or indigenous status; 32 the work of a civil society organization in Bulgaria, the Alliance for Protection against Gender-based Violence, paying special attention to vulnerable groups of women and girl s from ethnic minorities; the Republic of Moldova, indicating that the level of social exclusion of __________________ 29 30 31 32 12/22 The submission of Mexico included disaggregated data for indigenous peoples and Afrodescendent minorities, in addition to age and sex, in areas such as access to health services, employment and education. The submission by Slava Balan, PhD in Law Candidate, University of Ottawa, and Ecaterina Balan, International Minority Rights Fellow, surveyed the following States: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation and the United States of America. See https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/27027VNR_Synthesis_ Report_2020.pdf. The reference to Finland and the rejection of disaggregated data on ethnicity or indigenous status seems to suggest that such data are ethically problematic because it is somehow “inappropriate to pinpoint minority groups in statistics compiled for the needs of an equal and democratic society”. This does not appear logically coherent, since many “equal and democratic societies” actually do collect such data. In addition, it is not obvious why personal data on sex or gender are “harmless or unobjectionable”, whereas data on language, religion or ethnicit y would automatically be. 21-09902