A/75/590 how ongoing securitization of borders, and related massive economic profits, are a significant part of the problem. 4. Refugees, migrants and stateless persons are subject to the violations enumerated in the present report on account of their national origin, race, ethnicity and religion and other impermissible grounds. These violations cannot be dismissed as permissible distinctions between citizens and non -citizens. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur calls attention to her prior report on racial discrimination on the basis of citizenship, nationality and immigration status, in which she highlights discriminatory trends and the application of international human rights law where such violations are concerned. 3 5. Many of the same factors highlighted in the Special Rapporteur’s report to the Human Rights Council 4 are essential background for the present report, and she recommends that the present report be read in conjunction with that prior report. Her prior report is especially helpful, among other reasons, for explaining the mechanisms that cause racial discrimination through emerging digital technologies, and for highlighting the economic, political and other societal forces driving the expansion in the discriminatory use of these technologies. Here, she reiterates that, notwithstanding widespread perceptions of emerging digital technologies as neutral and objective in their operation, race, ethnicity, national origin and citizenship status shape access to and enjoyment of human rights in all of the fields in which these technologies are now pervasive. States have obligations to prevent, combat and remediate this racial discrimination, and private actors, such as corporations, have related responsibilities to do the same. In the context of border and immigration enforcement (as in other contexts), preventing human rights violations may require outright bans or abolition of technologies due to a failure to control or mitigate their effects. 6. In the preparation of the report, the Special Rapporteur benefited from valuable input from: expert group meetings hosted by the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law, the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, and the Migration and Technology Monitor; interviews with researchers, including stateless persons, migrants and refugees; and submissions received from a range of stakeholders in response to a public call for submissions. Non -confidential submissions will be available on the webpage of the mandate. II. The rise of digital borders 7. Technology has always been a part of border and immigration enforcement, and instruments ranging from passports and even physical border walls are all properly understood as features of this technology. The specific focus of the present report is the growing prevalence of digital technologies in immigration and border enforcement, such that some commentators appropriately refer to the rise of “digital borders” 5 – which in the present report refers to borders whose infrastructure and processes increasingly rely on machine learning, automated algorithmic decision making systems, predictive analytics and related digital technologies. These technologies are integrated into identification documents, facial recognition systems, ground sensors, aerial video surveillance drones, biometric databases, asylum __________________ 3 4 5 20-14872 A/HRC/38/52. A/HRC/44/57. See, for example, Dennis Broeders, “The new digital borders of Europe: EU databases and the surveillance of irregular migrants”, International Sociology, vol. 22, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 71–92. 5/25