A/HRC/40/64 63. On 4 October, he addressed the European Parliament’s Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages on the issue of minority rights, in Strasbourg, France. 64. On 5 and 6 October, he participated in a preparatory meeting coordinated by the Tom Lantos Institute with a number of European minority NGOs to discuss the possibility of organizing a forum on the education and the linguistic rights of minorities in Europe in Brussels. 65. On 8 October, he gave a presentation on his mandate and priorities to the members of the Advisory Committee of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, in Strasbourg, France. 66. On 11 October, he spoke on the topic of “Language is Power: An International and Legal Perspective”, at the Conference on Fulfilling Indigenous Peoples’ and Minority Rights to Culture and Language, organized by the Human Rights Consortium of the Institute of Modern Languages Research at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Brunel University Law School, in London. 67. On 12 October, he was keynote speaker at a colloquium in Paris on linguistic justice, during which he presented a paper on language rights and the human rights of minorities. 68. On 18 October, he participated in a side event on statelessness organized by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and the Open Society Justice Initiative in New York. 69. On 22 October, he participated in a side event on the theme of “Freedom of Religion or Belief: an Indicator of Human Rights Protections” and spoke about “Freedom of Religion: the First Right for Religious Minorities”. The event was organized by the NonGovernmental Organizations Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief at the Baha’i International Centre in New York. 70. On 23 October, he presented his annual report to the General Assembly, during which he also presented his initial thematic report on statelessness as a minority issue, highlighting why more than three quarters of the world’s stateless are members of a relatively small number of minorities around the world and proposing further steps to raise awareness and the visibility of the human rights dimensions and, in particular, the discriminatory denial or stripping of citizenship, which are the root causes of the most serious cases of statelessness in every region of the globe. Among some of the significant recommendations are the need to focus on minorities as the main victims of statelessness, as well as the necessity to further develop guidelines or practices to tackle more precisely and directly the practices, policies and laws that result in so many minorities being the main victims of statelessness. 71. On 27 October, he presented the keynote speech at the graduation ceremony for European regional MA in democracy and human rights in South-East Europe on “Democracy and Human Rights: the Challenge of Heroes”, at the University of Sarajevo. 72. On 29 October, he gave a seminar on “The Language Rights of Linguistic Minorities: International Standards and their Significance”, organized by the European Foundation of Human Rights, in Vilnius. 73. On 30 October, he gave a lecture on his mandate and activities at the European Foundation of Human Rights, in Vilnius. 74. On 6 November, he participated in the OHCHR (Middle East and North Africa) Youth Training Conference and gave a speech on the specific United Nations mechanisms that protect minority rights, in Marrakech, Morocco. 75. On 13 November, he addressed the issue of “Conflict Prevention to Avoid Humanitarian Crises: the Role of Human Rights and the Protection of Minorities”, at a special meeting on protecting vulnerable religious minorities in conflict and crisis settings organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in association with the United States Agency for International Development, in Wilton Park, United Kingdom. 11