A/HRC/41/54
I. Activities of the Special Rapporteur
A.
Country visits
1.
The Special Rapporteur would like to thank the Governments of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Morocco for their invitations and the
cooperation extended to her during her official country visits, which she conducted in 2018.
She also wishes to thank the Governments of the Netherlands and Qatar for inviting her to
conduct visits in the second half of 2019, and Brazil and Poland for accepting her country
visit requests. She looks forward to the cooperation of Brazil and Poland in scheduling
these visits for 2020. She urges Member States to respond positively to her outstanding
requests.
B.
Other activities
2.
The activities of the Special Rapporteur between April and July 2018 are reflected in
her report to the General Assembly at its seventy-third session (A/73/305). Between July
2018 and April 2019, the Special Rapporteur participated in various international
conferences and filed a number of amicus curiae briefs elaborating the principles and
obligations of racial equality and non-discrimination within the international human rights
framework. At the multilateral level, she was invited to be a panellist at the
Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular
Migration in 2018 and, on 25 March 2019, she was a keynote speaker at the
commemorative plenary meeting held by the General Assembly in New York to
commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
3.
In October 2018, the Special Rapporteur held two consultations on the margins of
the seventy-third session of the General Assembly and participated in various meetings,
including a meeting of the Groups of Friends on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
4.
In response to her call for submissions to the present report, the Special Rapporteur
received 22 submissions. She would like to mention the high quality of the submissions she
received.
II. Racial equality and the global extractivism economy
5.
The fundamental inequalities that characterize the global political economy are also
present in the extractivism economy. Powerful States and their transnational corporations,
and the political elites of weaker States that are territories of extraction, emerge as the clear
winners. The populations of these territories of extraction bear the brunt of the extractivism
economy, too often paying with their very lives. The purpose of the present report is to
explain why the obligations concerning racial equality and non-discrimination enshrined in
the international human rights framework must be central to reform, regulation and
evaluation of the extractivism economy. The report also serves to explain why sovereign
equality, the right to self-determination of peoples and the right to development are
fundamental in achieving racial equality and non-discrimination, and must be understood as
such in the elaboration of human rights standards and practices relating to all aspects of the
extractivism economy.
6.
In the report, the term “extractivism economy” refers to the industries, actors and
financial flows, as well as to the economic, material and social processes and outputs,
associated with the globalized extraction of natural resources. The extractivism economy
includes mineral and fossil fuel extraction, and monocultural large-scale agricultural,
forestry and fishery operations. The terms of this economy are set by a range of actors, the
most influential of which include States, national and transnational corporations and their
shareholders, international financial and development institutions, and multilateral
governance bodies and institutions. Although possessing lesser influence than those
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