A/75/211 and not “ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities”. 13 There was a greater range of views from submissions outside of Europe. 31. Regardless of the absence of a consensus on all the details and nuances between the categories of beneficiaries, the four distinct categories are now en shrined in United Nations treaties and instruments and create distinct legal human rights obligations. In addition, many submissions supported the need for clarification in order to avoid a disjointed approach to protecting human rights and to ensure consistent application of human rights within the United Nations system, and to avoid any denial of the existence of minorities. 32. Three preliminary and overarching issues should be addressed before proceeding with a description of the scope and significance of each of the four categories: the overlapping and non-exclusive identities, the concept of free selfidentification and the absence of official recognition or particular status, which the Special Rapporteur referred to specifically in paragraph 53 of his 2019 report to the General Assembly: An ethnic, religious or linguistic minority is any group of persons which constitutes less than half of the population in the entire territory of a State whose members share common characteristics of culture, religion or language, or a combination of any of these. A person can freely belong to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority without any requirement of citizenship, residence, official recognition or any other status. 33. The first issue is that none of the categories is necessarily exclusive. It should be obvious that individuals can at the same time belong to a linguistic, religious and ethnic minority – and even “belong to” more than one within the same category. A Canadian from a mixed Hungarian-Polish family brought up in a French-speaking minority community would consider herself or himself to belong to not one but three linguistic minorities, French, Hungarian and Polish. A Kurdish-speaking humanist born in Iraq but living in Australia might also consider herself or himself as being simultaneously Kurdish and Muslim in cultural and linguistic terms, as well as a humanist, Kurdish speaker and a Sunni culturally. An Indian Dalit convert to Buddhism working in Ethiopia would simultaneously encapsulate more than one cultural, linguistic and religious minority identities. Or an Afrodescendant, Spanish-speaking Peruvian person can be a member of the linguistic majority and at the same time a member of an ethnic minority, and of a religious minority, if she or he happens to be Baha’i. 34. None of the above examples are exceptional: they are the reality of the complexities of free choice and human diversity. And none of the complex ities is insurmountable from a human rights point of view: the Canadian could raise a number of human rights arguments if she or he was prevented from using Polish at home; the Kurdish Australian could also validly object to barriers preventing her or him from participating in festivities relating to Eid al-Fitr as part of her or his culture if not her or his beliefs as a humanist; and the Indian Dalit or Afrodescendant Peruvian could both face situations involving racial or religious discrimination. 35. Nothing in the formulation of the categories of national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities suggest that individuals belong to a minority can “only” be characterized as members of an ethnic or linguistic minority, but not both. The Rohingya in Myanmar, for example, are not “only” Muslims (some may be atheists or may have converted to, or been for generations adepts of, Christianity or Buddhism) – they also have a distinct language and culture that means they (or at least most of them) can at the same time be members of an ethnic, religious and __________________ 13 20-09835 See E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.5/2001/2, para. 8. 9/20