E/CN.4/1998/79 page 27 Secretary-General. The specialist programme staff responsible for assisting the Special Rapporteur and following up his mandate from day to day are called upon to perform other tasks and sent on mission to the field; the assistants, devoted and competent though they are, have to attend to other mandates and the secretary handles several dossiers and mandates at once, since submission dates for periodic reports are binding and apparently more important than the substance of the reports themselves. Contacts have been relatively few and far between. It must be hoped that, with the new High Commissioner for Human Rights and the current restructuring, things will change and the Special Rapporteur will be able to carry out his mandate in appropriate and more humane circumstances. B. Follow-up to field visits: legislative and judicial measures taken or envisaged by Governments 107. As stated in his report to the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur has been informed of measures taken or envisaged by the Governments of countries he has visited, such as Germany, Brazil and the United States of America. 108. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom (mission report in 1995), France (mission report in 1995), Colombia (mission report in 1996) and Kuwait (mission report in 1996), have not yet informed the Special Rapporteur what action they have taken following his visits. (a) Germany 109. In his report to the General Assembly (A/51/301), the Special Rapporteur noted observations made by the German Government on a number of paragraphs of his report to the General Assembly at its forty-ninth session (A/49/677). He thanked the German Government for its clarifications regarding the alleged incidents of racial discrimination brought to his attention and congratulated it on the measures taken to punish the offenders and to improve, through appropriate action, the situation regarding xenophobia and racial violence. He also encouraged the German Government to pursue its efforts to curb xenophobia and racial violence and to maintain its exchanges with him. 110. In this context and in response to the Special Rapporteur's request for information on the measures taken or envisaged by Governments to combat contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, the German Government sent a communication with information on the measures taken, on 30 July 1997. This contained information on the following: statistics on racially motivated violence against migrant workers and their families and other socially vulnerable groups; the responsibility of the media (including the Internet) in inciting acts of racially motivated violence; social measures to eliminate all forms of racism, including the organization of the European Year Against Racism and educating people to be tolerant; the legal situation in the area of racism and racial discrimination (status of criminal law); and the policy for integrating foreigners and granting compensation for victims of acts of violence in the Federal Republic of Germany.