A/76/162 discriminatory exclusion of minorities in the strategies for the Sustainable Development Goals. 34. An OHCHR position paper 22 published shortly after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals misleadingly stated that “the new agenda includes perhaps the most expansive list of groups to be given special focus of any international document of its kind”. This is false, since it removes all references to minorities, one of the world’s main marginalized groups that needed special focus according to many studies on development and poverty. 35. Furthermore, the indicators to measure progress against the Goals, endorsed b y the Statistical Commission, fell far short of meeting the ambition of the Goals and targets in measuring the inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups, in particular minorities, as had been recommended previously. While initially the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, which had been tasked with creating the indicators, had expressed its commitment to disaggregation by all the categories listed in the targets, the indicators were often either too vague or restrictive. It was pointed out to the Special Rapporteur, for example, that in the case of the indicator for target 10.2, while the spirit of the target was to “empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status”, the indicator proposed to measure it did not even list five of the groups in the target, rendering it meaningless. 23 In other words, again, the “leave no one behind” commitment therefore excluded the type of data that was essential to measure the inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups such as minorities, but also specifically indigenous peoples and, in particular, highly vulnerable minorities such as Afrodescendants and Roma. Ironically, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, would a few years later call for the collection of exactly the form of disaggregated data rejected in the indicator adopted for target 10.2 of the Goals. 24 C. Obstacles to the equal participation of minorities in social and economic development 36. Among the submissions to the Special Rapporteur for the present thematic report, it was suggested that “leave no one behind” was the main clarion call throughout the process of developing the Sustainable Development Goals. In part to address the criticism that the Millennium Development Goals masked inequality between groups, the new global Goals were to address this with their commitment that all targets would be met “for all nations, all peoples and for all segments of society”. 25 As the Special Rapporteur has often pointed out, the identification of the extent to which minorities can effectively and equally participate in a State’s social and economic development requires data that are disaggregated by age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status. __________________ 22 23 24 25 10/22 See www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/MDGs/Post2015/HRAndPost2015.pdf. Submission by Minority Rights Group and the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development. The High Commissioner called for a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism and discrimination and detailed the “compounding inequalities” and “stark so cioeconomic and political marginalization” that afflict people of African descent (see www.ohchr.org/EN/ NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27218&LangID=E). She decried the lack of comprehensive official disaggregated data regarding those minorities. Submission by Minority Rights Group and the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development. 21-09902