A/75/590 I. Introduction 1. The present report continues the analysis initiated by the Special Rapporteur in her most recent report to the Human Rights Council, entitled “Racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies: a human rights analysis”. 1 In that report, the Special Rapporteur introduced an equality-based approach to human rights governance of emerging digital technologies, with a focus on racial discrimination resulting from the design and use of these technologies. She urged State and no n-State actors to move beyond “colour-blind” or “race-neutral” strategies that ignore the racialized and ethnic impact of emerging digital technologies, and instead to confront directly the intersectional forms of discrimination that result from and are ex acerbated by the widespread adoption of these technologies. That report focused on those subject to discrimination primarily on the basis of race and ethnicity (including indigeneity), and drew attention to the effects of gender, religion, and disability s tatus. The present report to the General Assembly brings additional nuance by focusing on the xenophobic and racially discriminatory impacts of emerging digital technologies on migrants, stateless persons, refugees and other non-citizens, as well as on nomadic and other peoples for whom migratory traditions are central. The term “refugees” includes asylum seekers who meet the refugee definition but whose status as refugees has not yet been formally recognized by any State. 2. Although emerging digital technologies are now prevalent in the governance of all aspects of society, unique concerns exist in the border and immigration context for at least two reasons. Under most if not all national governance frameworks: (a) Non-citizens, stateless persons and related groups have fewer rights and legal protections from abuse of State power, and may be the targets of unique forms of xenophobic private violence; (b) Executive and other branches of government retain expansive discretionary, unreviewable powers in the realm of border and immigration enforcement that are not subject to the typical substantive and procedural constraints, constitutionally and otherwise guaranteed to citizens. 3. As highlighted in the present report, governments and non -State actors are developing and deploying emerging digital technologies in ways that are uniquely experimental, dangerous and discriminatory in the border and immigration enforcement context. By so doing, they are subjecting refugees, migrants, stateless persons and others to human rights violations, and extracting large quantities of data from them on exploitative terms that strip these groups of fundamental human agency and dignity. Although the focus of the present report is relatively recent technological innovations, many of these technologies have historical antecedents in colonial technologies of racialized governance, including through migration controls. Not only is technology not neutral, but its design and use typically reinforce dominant social, political and economic trends. As highlighted in previous reports, the resurgence of ethnonationalist populism globally has had serious xenophobic and racially discriminatory consequences for refugees, migrants and stateless persons. 2 The present report highlights how digital technologies are being deployed to advance the xenophobic and racially discriminatory ideologies that have become so prevalent, in part due to widespread perceptions of refugees and migrants as per se threats to national security. In other cases, discrimination and exclusion occur in the absence of explicit animus, but as a result of the pursuit of bureaucratic and humanitarian efficiency without the necessary human rights safeguards. The report also highlights __________________ 1 2 4/25 A/HRC/44/57. See, for example, A/73/312. 20-14872