A/57/204 mandate holder already had taken on other national and international commitments and could not be fully available. 9. The third factor to be taken into account, perhaps in conjunction with the second, concerns the treatment which the special procedures received at the fiftyeighth session of the Commission on Human Rights. During that session, in the wake of the drastic measures imposed by the General Assembly curtailing meeting time, the time allotted to some of the special rapporteurs was reduced so much that they found it impossible to introduce their reports properly. A fourth factor affecting fulfilment of the mandate was the conference service rules, and specifically the requirement that the special rapporteurs had to submit their reports to the General Assembly by 2 July at the latest, barely two months from the time the Commission ended its work, thereby allowing too little time for the compilation of information. 10. At their ninth meeting, which was held in Geneva from 24 to 28 June, the special rapporteurs discussed the inhospitable climate in which they had to fulfil their mandates and concluded that it was hardly conducive to human rights promotion and protection. Lip service is paid to human rights, but in actual fact regressive and inconsistent measures are impairing the smooth functioning of machinery for the protection of human rights. This discourages the mandate holders and undermines the effectiveness of the implementation of human rights principles. 11. In such a troubled atmosphere, the Special Rapporteur could do no more than give a concise account of some of his activities and summarize the principal trends of contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, with the hope that his successor will be able to carry out the necessary studies. II. Activities of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights A. Participation in the work of the Commission on Human Rights 12. From 22 to 26 March 2002, the Special Rapporteur participated in the work of the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on Human Rights and introduced his general report on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (E/CN.4/2002/24) and the report on his mission to Australia from 22 April to 10 May 2001 (E/CN.4/2002/24/Add.1 and Corr.1). 13. The Special Rapporteur highlighted the main achievements of the Durban Conference, including: (a) Acknowledgement of the evils of colonialism, and classification of slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity; (b) Affirmation of the equal dignity of human beings in all places and at all times, whether based on religion or reason, and denunciation of racism and racial discrimination as products of archaic thinking that stand in the way of human progress; (c) The proposition that dialogue between civilizations provides responses to the problem of achieving respect for cultural and human diversity, in particular that of accepting difference in others in the face of dominant societies’ attempts to 6