A/HRC/55/35 right to freedom of religion or belief, including ensuring that legislation and practices conformed to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 72 M. Data collection 67. In the Republic of Moldova, OHCHR provided expertise to the public consultations regarding the questionnaires for the upcoming population and housing census in 2024 organized by the National Bureau of Statistics. As a result, aspects related to ethnicity and language were better reflected in the questionnaires. In particular, persons belonging to minorities will be able to indicate more than one ethnic affiliation or a combination of ethnic affiliations, and sign languages will be considered as minority languages. 68. As a continuation of the support provided by OHCHR to the Government of Serbia with regard to monitoring, reporting on, implementing and following up on the recommendations of the United Nations human rights mechanisms, including those specifically aimed at promoting and protecting minority rights, the process of nationalizing the OHCHR National Recommendations Tracking Database was initiated in September. A workshop on the usage of this database was attended by more than 30 members of the National Mechanism for Reporting and Follow-up and by human rights focal points. IV. United Nations network on racial discrimination and protection of minorities 69. The United Nations network on racial discrimination and protection of minorities 73 continued to provide a platform to address, through awareness-raising, advocacy and capacity-building, issues of racial discrimination and the protection of national or ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, including in relation to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. The network brings together a range of United Nations departments, agencies, programmes and funds, which have identified focal points for this purpose. OHCHR acts as permanent Co-Chair for the network. The Co-Chair for 2023 was the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. 70. Two non-papers on options for addressing racial discrimination and advancing protection of minorities in peace and security, including prevention, as well as on options for civil society engagement with the United Nations network on racial discrimination and protection of minorities, were prepared pursuant to the decisions taken at the network’s senior-level meeting held in February. 71. In March, the network’s subgroup on people of African descent began to convene, which involved a core team from UNFPA, UNDP and UN-Women. The subgroup started working on a training module on tackling racism in programming, with a view both to holding training programmes starting from late 2023 and to developing a model for a future system-wide training programme. 72. The network convened in plenary in May. Around 50 network members took part in the meeting, which heard presentations from, inter alia, the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, on his March 2023 proposal for a United Nations convention on minority rights; and a business sector representative, on the subject of the diversity and inclusion work done by the private sector; as well as presentations by the United Nations country teams in Cameroon and Panama on activities undertaken with funding made available by OHCHR to address racial discrimination and protection of minorities. 73. The network closely cooperated with the experts of the newly established Permanent Forum on People of African Descent to identify potential entry points for the network to support the Permanent Forum with the implementation of its mandate. 72 73 GE.23-26212 CCPR/C/IRN/CO/4, paras. 47 and 48. See https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities/un-network-racial-discrimination-and-protection-minorities. 15