A/CONF.189/PC.1/7 page 34 Conclusion 2 128. Nevertheless, a study of the various provisions leads to the conclusion that there is a body of sufficiently well-established rules and a set of principles shared by all the nations and all the States members of the international community, which suggests an openness to theoretical acceptance of a right to freedom from aggravated discrimination. At the international level, most of these principles are dispensed throughout the human rights instruments adopted since the United Nations came into being. The universal instruments are generally more advanced than the regional texts in this regard. The universal instruments address the issue of racial and religious discrimination in depth. Some of them even explicitly define the overlap between race and religion, either in the course of defining the form of discrimination under consideration, or in determining the scope ratione personae of the various instruments. In the course of this study, the definition of ethnic and religious minorities, in particular the concepts of ethnicity and minority, brought out these links. Conclusion 3 129. Internal legislation is generally speaking protective in nature and many Constitutions, in their sections on fundamental rights, proclaim the right to non-discrimination; some of them grant specific rights to minorities. Even so, many forms of discrimination, particularly those relating to religion, are directly or indirectly enshrined in those Constitutions and affect ethnic groups in particular. Conclusion 4 130. A study of the facts has shown that the overlap between racial and religious discrimination is not merely imagined. No region in the world and no religion, whether major or minor, traditional or non-traditional, monotheistic or polytheistic, is immune to aggravated discrimination. Conclusion 5 131. The instruments studied would appear, therefore, to be out of phase with reality. At any rate, they do not appear to accept the full consequences of their own recognition of the links between race and religion. This overlap is a product of the tremendous richness of human civilization. The right to freedom from aggravated discrimination is therefore integral to international human rights protection, in particular to respect for the plurality of individual identities. Aggravated discrimination deserves special, or even priority, attention, because when it affects minorities or minority groups, its cumulative nature is a threat to law and order and/or a source of encouragement to potential or actual separatist tendencies. 132. Action is needed: there are many possibilities. Action may be taken to strengthen protection (section A), or to prevent aggravated discrimination (section B). Internal measures, although their scope differs from that of international measures and they emerge through different processes, are nonetheless a logical development and extension of that action. Moreover, international measures are meaningless if they are not taken up or followed up at the national level.134