A/HRC/52/27 with others; with the Forum on Minority Issues not having seen any significant budgetary increases, meaning, today, that there are not enough financial resources to cover the travel costs for the expert panellists whom should be invited to attend. Even one of the few more recent and promising measures to better recognize and protect minorities, and hear their voices, and more accessible platforms to raise their concerns and offer constructive solutions, namely the organization of regional forums on minorities for the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia, is not a permanent fixture at the United Nations or even a formal activity of the Organization, but was initiated by the Special Rapporteur as an independent expert and has been made possible because of civil society support, such as that from the Tom Lantos Institute. The United Nations network on racial discrimination and protection of minorities was itself moribund without holding any meetings for years until 2019.22 Even the shining star of OHCHR, the Minorities Fellowship Programme, has not resumed yearly in-person training since 2020. 48. Finally, there remains too many examples of United Nations institutions not responding promptly or effectively to some of the worst human rights and humanitarian crises until much too late, particularly when it comes to minorities, such as in the responses to the mass incarceration of members of the Uighur and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, the genocides and crimes against humanity in Rwanda committed against the Tutsi minority and in Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Muslim minority, the massive denial of citizenship rights for more than a million persons belonging to the Rohingya minority, and subsequent refugee and displacement crises, to the more recent situation of millions from the Muslim minority being at risk of becoming stateless in India and the situation of forced assimilation that seems to be involved when as many as one million children of the Tibetan minority in China are separated from their families to be sent to residential schools and denied their religious, linguistic and cultural rights. 49. Whereas the protection of minorities was presented as a priority at the United Nations in 1948 and subsequently as a significant area to develop, and despite the adoption 30 years ago of the Declaration and the subsequent issuance of the 2013 Guidance Note of the Secretary-General, most comments from civil society received by the Special Rapporteur reflected the view that the actual institutional measures for the protection of minorities have not materialized, whereas the protection afforded to other groups has been significant. They rather confirm the Secretary-General’s own view expressed in September 2022 that “we are dealing with outright inaction and negligence in the protection of minority rights”. 50. Needless to say, this is particularly troubling in a context in which globally there appears to be a growing hostility against minorities, and subsequent denial of their rights, as seen in the rise of online and offline hate speech and hate crimes overwhelmingly targeting minorities,23 the record-level increases in the number of stateless persons worldwide, with more than 75 per cent of them being persons targeted because they belong to specific minorities,24 the troubling and increasing restrictions on the identity of minorities in relation to education in their own languages, 25 and the growing number of conflicts involving minorities with grievances related to exclusion and discrimination, or situations in which minority issues are instrumentalized26 to the point at which there are now more conflicts than at any other time since the adoption 30 years ago of the Declaration – and the subsequent atrocities, even crimes against humanity, and humanitarian crises. 51. Nevertheless, and perhaps counterintuitively, what was eminently apparent in the processes and consultations occurring in 2022 within the frameworks of the Forum on Minority Issues and the four regional forums, as well as the call for submissions for the present thematic report, was not despair – despite the despondency in an admittedly not particularly favourable global context – but the overall desire of minorities and human rights and civil society organizations to move forward and do more and better – including at the United Nations. 22 23 24 25 26 12 A/77/246, para. 56. A/HRC/46/57. A/73/205. A/HRC/43/47. A/HRC/49/46.