A/HRC/37/66 compounding their vulnerability, and can even lead to mass expulsion. Once denied or deprived of citizenship, minorities are inevitably denied protection of their basic rights and freedoms, including minority rights as established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.5 37. Stateless minorities are often doubly vulnerable. The discriminatory denial or removal of citizenship may have long-lasting and extreme consequences for the enjoyment of other rights and/or to access various services. In addition, women belonging to minorities may be further marginalized by gender-based discrimination in relation to the acquisition, change or retention of nationality and the conferral of nationality on their children. 38. Until recently, it was neither widely known nor appreciated that minorities were disproportionally impacted by practices relating to the denial of citizenship and statelessness. In a recent report, UNHCR stated that more than 75 per cent of the world’s known stateless populations were minorities.6 Minorities, therefore, make up most of the world’s stateless population. As other reports have also noted, the disproportionate vulnerability of minorities to statelessness — as a result of state policies and legislation — “can leave them excluded from state structures, without the right to vote or access basic services such as healthcare or education. In extreme cases, statelessness may leave them vulnerable to violence and mass displacement.” 7 39. Ten years after the groundbreaking report of the first mandate holder, the Special Rapporteur would like to revisit this essential aspect as it continues to affect a large number of minorities. In line with his mandate of promoting the implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities and identifying best practices by States and possibilities for technical cooperation with OHCHR, the Special Rapporteur will explore the possibility of conducting extensive work in consultation with United Nations agencies, regional intergovernmental organizations and NGOs. During the course of 2018, he will look into the possibility of conducting a regional consultation on good practices and specific approaches to tackling the absence or denial of citizenship which disproportionately affects minorities. That initiative would be extremely important at this time as it is increasingly evident that the marginalization and disenfranchisement of minority groups is linked to underdevelopment and unrest, with potential significant consequences for both national and regional security in some areas of the world. 40. Accordingly, the Special Rapporteur will prepare a thematic report, building upon the significant efforts of various stakeholders, including UNHCR #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness by 2024, 8 which primarily aims to achieve equal access to nationality rights for minorities. Particular attention will be given to actions 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8 of the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness. Those are respectively: facilitating the naturalization or confirmation of nationality for stateless minorities resident in a State; allowing minority children to obtain the nationality of the country in which they were born if they would otherwise be stateless; eliminating discriminatory laws and practices that deny or deprive minorities of nationality on discriminatory grounds; ensuring universal birth registration to prevent statelessness; eliminating procedural and practical obstacles to the issuance or recognition of citizenship and identity papers. Focus on these aspects is in line with the Special Rapporteur’s mandate to examine the means of overcoming obstacles to the full and effective realization of the rights of persons belonging to minorities. 5 6 7 8 See A/HRC/7/23, summary. UNHCR, “This is our home”: Stateless minorities and their search for citizenship, 2017 Statelessness Report, p. 1. Denial and Denigration: How Racism Feeds Statelessness, Minority Rights Group International, October 2017, http://stories.minorityrights.org/statelessness/home/. See www.unhcr.org/ibelong/. 9