A/HRC/40/64 I. Introduction 1. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues was established by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 2005/79 of 21 April 2005. It was subsequently extended by the Human Rights Council in successive resolutions, the most recent being resolution 34/6, which extended the mandate under the same terms as provided for in resolution 25/5. 2. The Special Rapporteur, Fernand de Varennes, was appointed by the Council on 26 June 2017 and assumed his functions on 1 August 2017. His term in office may be renewed for two three-year periods. 3. The Special Rapporteur is honoured to be entrusted with the mandate and thanks the Council for its trust in him. He also wishes to thank the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for its support in the implementation of the mandate. 4. The present report is the second submitted by the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council. In section II of the report, the Special Rapporteur provides an overview of his activities in 2018, including an update on the Forum on Minority Issues. In section III, he provides an update on the topic of statelessness as a minority issue, which was covered in his first thematic report. In section IV, he highlights the significance of raising awareness and the visibility of minority issues. In section V, he refers to the development of a new tool to increase accessibility to and visibility of the recommendations and other documentation emanating from the Forum on Minority Issues. The final section of the report contains conclusions and insights on the Special Rapporteur’s mandate. II. Activities of the Special Rapporteur 5. The Special Rapporteur wishes to draw the attention of the Council to the information published on the mandate’s website, which provides general information on the activities associated with the mandate, including communications, press statements, public appearances, country visits and thematic reports. 1 6. The first full year of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate has been focused on increasing the visibility and raising awareness of minority issues, both within United Nations institutions and more generally with members of the greater public and other regional and international organizations, and of exploring new approaches in order to improve the accessibility of the mandate’s activities such as the Forum on Minority Issues. 7. The human rights of minorities are not always sufficiently acknowledged or prominent in many areas, including statelessness. This can be seen when, within the United Nations, groups such as the Rohingya – a religious, ethnic and linguistic minority in Myanmar – are at times described in its documents as a people, a group, or a community, but not necessarily as a minority. Uncertainty as to what constitutes a minority for the purposes of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and to the significance in practical terms of such a status, may partially explain these situations. For these reasons, many of the Special Rapporteur’s activities have sought to redress, by actively and consistently highlighting the prominence of minorities as particularly affected by statelessness, hate speech and other areas of human rights concerns. 8. For these reasons, the Special Rapporteur has focused on the need for greater clarity as to who are minorities and what are their human rights, as recognized in the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and other United Nations instruments, including, in particular, article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 30 of the Convention on the 1 See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Minorities/SRMinorities/Pages/SRminorityissuesIndex.aspx. 3