A/78/195 III. Overview of mandate-related priorities and accomplishments since 2017 11. In his first report to the General Assembly, submitted in 2017, the Special Rapporteur identified four thematic priorities: statelessness; education, language and the human rights of minorities; hate speech targeting minorities on social media; and the prevention of ethnic conflicts. During his mandate, he has also focused on new approaches to improve the accessibility of activities carried out under the mandate, such as the sessions of the Forum on Minority Issues, and on the gaps in efforts to better protect the rights of minorities in the institutions, structures and initiatives of the United Nations. 12. These thematic priorities were raised in all of the Special Rapporteur’s country visits (to Botswana, Kyrgyzstan, Paraguay, Slovenia, Spain and the United States of America), at regional forums and at the Forum on Minority Issues and were frequently referred to in other activities and events and in his annual reports to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. A. Statelessness 13. One of the few positive outcomes regarding statelessness during the Special Rapporteur’s tenure occurred in 2019 in Kyrgyzstan, where the Government adopted legislation and took steps that led it to become the first country to largely end statelessness for all practical purposes (A/HRC/46/57/Add.1, para. 16). 14. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees #IBelong campaign to end statelessness by 2024 is soon coming to an end, without having made any significant impact on the total global number of stateless people. Less char itable assessments suggest that it has failed completely, since there has been no visible reduction made in statelessness since the start of the campaign almost 10 years ago, and there are very real risks of millions more people becoming stateless in the c oming years. 15. The failure of the #IBelong campaign to end statelessness by 2024, or even to reduce it significantly, appears to be largely owing to an insufficient focus on the main causes of statelessness worldwide, namely, the discriminatory and targe ted denial of citizenship for members of certain minority communities. As the Special Rapporteur has frequently indicated in his annual reports, including the previous report submitted to the General Assembly, more than three quarters of the world’s stateless are from a handful of minority groups who are collectively denied citizenship in such countries as Côte d’Ivoire (Dioula and other northern minorities), the Dominican Republic (minority of Haitian descent), Latvia (Russian -speaking minority) and Myanmar (Rohingya minority) (A/73/205). Despite this, addressing the main causes of statelessness affecting minorities was not designated as a priority for the 2014–2024 #IBelong campaign to end statelessness by 2024. Similarly, UNHCR acting through the campaign, and even the United Nations as a whole, have been largely silent or impotent in addressing the warnings and grave concerns expressed by the Special Rapporteur and others that millions more members of minorit ies of mainly Bengali and Muslim background in Assam, India (and potentially in other parts of the country) could be considered to be non-citizens and become de facto stateless persons in the near future (ibid., para. 35). 16. While there is to be a new initiative called the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, which is aimed at, by 2030, accelerating solutions to statelessness through a collective multi-stakeholder approach that is centred on and respects the 23-15818 5/21