A/HRC/7/23 page 2 Summary The mandate of the independent expert on minority issues was established by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 2005/79. The independent expert is required, inter alia, to promote the implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and to identify best practices by States and possibilities for technical cooperation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The independent expert submitted her previous report to the Human Rights Council in February 2007, in which she provided a summary of her activities and addressed in detail the thematic issue of minorities, poverty and the Millennium Development Goals. The present report provides a summary of the activities undertaken by the independent expert. Since the submission of her previous annual report, the independent expert has undertaken official country missions to France, from 19 to 28 September 2007, and to the Dominican Republic, from 22 to 29 October 2007. Her visit to the Dominican Republic was conducted jointly with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Over the past year, the independent expert has conducted thematic work on issues relating to the discriminatory denial or deprivation of citizenship as a tool for exclusion of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, which is the thematic focus of the present report. That work included convening an expert seminar on the subject in Geneva in December 2007. Minorities often face discrimination and exclusion, and they struggle to gain access to their human rights, even under conditions of full and unquestioned citizenship. Denying or stripping them of citizenship can be an effective method of 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. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, close to 15 million people in more than 49 countries are stateless, and numbers appear to be increasing. Many minorities live in a precarious legal situation because, even though they may be entitled under law to citizenship in the State in which they live, they are often denied or deprived of that right and may in fact exist in a situation of statelessness. While many conditions give rise to the creation of statelessness, including protracted refugee situations and State succession, most stateless persons today are members of minority groups.