A/77/246 Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Kairat Abdrakhmanov, at an event organized in collaboration with the United Nations Office at Geneva focusing on the effective participation of minorities in economic life as a strategy for conf lict prevention. On 7 January 2022, he participated online as a member of a task force on countering extremism and incitement to violence with the Democracy and Internet Governance Initiative Working Group at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the United States of America. On 20 January 2022, he participated in a consultation on social media content moderation and freedom of religion or belief as it pertains to minorities. On 11 March 2022, he was a keynote speaker at an online side event of the forty -ninth session of the Human Rights Council entitled “Religious or belief minorities at risk in Xinjiang, Afghanistan and Nigeria: recommendations from the Forum on Minority Issues”, organized by the International Bar Association and the Permanent Missions of the United States and the Netherlands. On 10 May 2022 he gave a lecture as part of the Global Campus Arab Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democracy in its new seminar on minorities in the Middle East and North Africa region. A. Activities related to thematic priorities 5. The Special Rapporteur identified four thematic priorities in his first statement to the General Assembly in October 2017: statelessness, education and language of minorities, hate speech and social media, and the prevention of ethnic conflicts through the protection of the rights of minorities. The Special Rapporteur has engaged in activities on all four thematic priorities. Among them are the pr eparation of a practical guide on the implementation of the rights of minorities in relation to education in and the teaching of minority languages and work on a further guide on the eradication of statelessness of minorities by ensuring non -discrimination in citizenship laws and practices. He has, in this regard, raised grave concerns about processes in Assam, India, which could potentially lead to millions of minorities of mainly Bengali and Muslim background being considered non-citizens and stateless. 6. Hate speech, social media and minorities were the focus of the report of the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council in 2021 (A/HRC/46/57). Since then, the Special Rapporteur has launched a process for drafting effective guidelines on hate speech, social media and minorities, with the aim of promoting understanding of the various forms and the harmful impact of online hate speech against persons belonging to minorities, as well as the role of socia l media in the dissemination of hate speech. The guidelines will also include an analysis and discussion of the legal, institutional and policy challenges in the regulation of hate speech against minorities on social media platforms. The report of the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council in 2022 (A/HRC/49/46) focused on conflict prevention through the protection of the human rights of minorities. B. Regional forums and the Forum on Minority Issues in 2021 7. Regional forums are organized with significant assistance from the Tom Lantos Institute and numerous regional partners. In 2021, four regional forums (for Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific and Europe and Central Asia) were held on the theme of conflict prevention and the protection of the human rights of minorities. Some 800 participants took part in the regional forums, which were held virtually because of the coronavirus disease (COVID -19) pandemic. Two regional forums – the first for Europe and Central Asia and the second for Asia and the Pacific – were held in the first half of 2022. 4/21 22-11516