A/HRC/55/35 III. Other activities of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and recent developments in human rights bodies and mechanisms A. Selected global, regional and country engagement activities 11. The 2023 report of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues to the Human Rights Council 13 was focused on moving forward in recognizing and protecting the rights of minorities at the United Nations, critically reviewing and assessing the implementation of the Declaration since its adoption. The Special Rapporteur pointed to what he described as little or no significant development institutionally at the United Nations for advancing the protection of minorities, when compared to other marginalized groups. The Special Rapporteur recommended, inter alia, that a new guidance note be issued to operationalize the 2013 Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities14 in order to put into action the mainstreaming and integration of minority rights across all pillars and activities of the United Nations. He urged the United Nations system to reactivate and implement the integration of minority rights into its work at the global, regional and country levels, to create a permanent forum for minorities to improve the capacity of the United Nations to effectively address the problems facing minorities, and to mainstream in the training of United Nations staff the #Faith4Rights toolkit, in particular module 6 on minorities.15 12. During the reporting period, the human rights component of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)16 continued its trust-building efforts focused on promoting language learning and removing language barriers. It developed C1-level materials for the VocUp language learning platform, including 10 video clips and 60 audio clips in Albanian and Serbian, along with 150-page textbooks. Eight tailored lessons on language rights as human rights were created for both languages, with regular educational videos posted on social media. International Mother Language Day activities supported by UNMIK included television debates in both the Albanian and Serbian languages. Participants discussed the implementation of the Language Law, the significance of language rights for human rights, and the preservation of multilingualism in Kosovo. 13. UNMIK also facilitated the joint statement of the Ombudsperson Institution and the Language Commissioner to emphasize the importance of multilingualism and multilingual education in preserving one’s cultural identity and building an inclusive society. By the end of the project, the two institutions entered into a joint road map of cooperation to strengthen their inter-institutional cooperation in supporting multilingualism and implementing applicable language standards across Kosovo. Within the same project, the human rights component of UNMIK contributed to developing an administrative instruction to support the recognition of languages in official use and the implementation of the Language Law. B. Early warning mechanisms and protection of the existence of minorities 14. Throughout 2023, the High Commissioner raised the issue of minority rights in his public statements in relation to a number of countries. 17 Furthermore, in his statement at the fifty-second session of the Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner drew attention to 13 14 15 16 17 4 A/HRC/52/27, paras. 25–67. See https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/Issues/Minorities/GuidanceNoteRacial DiscriminationMinorities.pdf. A/HRC/52/27, paras. 69 and 73. References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). See, for example, https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2023/03/global-update-highcommissioner-outlines-concerns-over-40-countries, https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/06/urging-greater-cooperation-high-commissioner-turkopens-human-rights-council and https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/09/human-rights-councilopens-its-fifty-fourth-regular-session-hears-global-update-high. GE.23-26212