A/78/195 adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities in 1992 and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action in 1993. 71. Now, as then, armed conflicts and instability are sweeping the world at neverbefore-seen levels, and now, as then, minority issues figure prominently in many and even most of these conflicts. Today’s contexts and conditions are even more troubling and threatening than those of the 1990s. Thirty years later, not only are armed conflicts and instability at record levels (with a correlated increase in the number of internally displaced persons, now standing at some 110 million – the most in human history), but the world is experiencing a poisoning of the mind through social media in the form of hate speech, racism, hostility, incitement to violence and even calls to genocide, mainly targeting minorities. In addition, the number of stateless people is increasing – a situation in which minorities are overwhelming denied citizenship on a discriminatory basis. Moreover, there are now new threats, including threats stemming from artificial intelligence, which have the potential to again propel and supercharge the hate and harm experienced by minorities. 35 One must also add the environmental threats and dangers that the whole world is facing – but that often pose a greater risk to minorities and Indigenous Peoples in some parts of the world. 72. The risks of atrocities, humanitarian catastrophes and even genocide have never been higher. The world is darker, more dangerous and more threatening, and the need to address many of the root causes of the massive and grave denial of human rights of hundreds of millions of members of minorities has never been greater. Hence, there is a need to focus and complete the efforts launched 30 years ago that were never completed, and to rectify the “inaction and negligence” and the lagging behind of the treatment and protection of and initiatives for minorities when compared with those provided to other vulnerable groups at the United Nations (such as refugees, migrants, Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, women, children and persons with disabilities). A. New start – relaunching and reinvigorating the mainstreaming of minority rights 73. A decade ago – to mark the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities – the Secretary-General, in his guidance note on racial discrimination and protection of minorities, issued in 2013, provided for the mainstreaming and integration of minority rights in all United Nations pillars and activities and the integration of minority rights into the work of the United Nations system at the global, regional and country levels, including through coordination mechanisms. As the Special Rapporteur has urged in his two previous reports to the Human Rights Council and to the General Assembly, this guidance note must be relaunched and properly implemented, since it appears to have been quic kly set aside and forgotten a few years after its initial launch. The Secretary -General could update the decade-old initiative to take into account the new and menacing threats of hate speech targeting minorities on social media, the growing number of stat eless __________________ 35 18/21 For example, in the Republic of Korea in January 2021, a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence called Lee Luda was taken down just a few weeks after its launch after spewing hate speech against minorities. The algorithms of artificial intelligence used in interactive platforms allow bots to learn from past chat records or their interactions. Given the large -scale prevalence of hate speech against minorities on social media, and the “teaching” or manipulation of artificial intelligence bots by racist and intolerant users, the bots are easily funnelled towards forms of intolerance and discrimination and themselves begin to spout hate speech a gainst minorities. See A/HRC/46/57, para. 73. 23-15818