A/77/246 discrimination and protection of minorities, 19 and the organization of regional minority forums beginning in 2019 as an initiative of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, with the support of a few States Members of the United Nations and the Tom Lantos Institute. 20 The network has not yet resulted in any major institutional development in the protection of the human rights of minorities and was in fact moribund for a number of years until 2019. 21 The regional minority forums are an initiative of the Special Rapporteur as an independent expert, and not yet an official United Nations or OHCHR activity. 57. Finally, the Secretary General’s 2013 guidance note on racial discrimination and protection of minorities called for the mainstreaming of minority rights across all United Nations pillars and activities and recommended that the United Nations integrate anti-discrimination and minority rights into the work of the United Nations system at the global, regional and country levels, including through coordination mechanisms. This, however, did not occur. 58. Overall, the post-2005 period has not been kind to the concerns of minorities at the United Nations. Two main phenomena signal an apparent growing malaise or unwillingness to address minority issues and the human rights o f minorities: first, the lack of further integration or mainstreaming of minority rights in the United Nations system, and second an increasing “disappearing act”: references to minorities are often completely omitted or replaced by sanitized references to communities or people, or a regional or geographic designation. Such omissions are not insignificant, since, for example, communities have no human rights in international law, while minorities do. Furthermore, such omissions serve the interests of States that prefer to divert attention from their own minority issues by denying the existence or presence of minorities – and their human rights – and preventing international scrutiny. 59. The main conclusion that emanates from these observations is that what has been happening at the United Nations in terms of minority issues and the protection of the rights of minorities is regression rather than mere stagnation. G. Minorities being left behind at the United Nations: failure to mainstream and integrate the rights of minorities 60. Most marginalized and vulnerable groups have been increasingly acknowledged through official United Nations days, years and even decades, as well as specific programmes of action and initiatives, including with funding and sig nificant staffing commitments, and in most cases this has led to the drafting to legally binding treaties. This has not happened in the case of minorities. 61. Groups such as indigenous peoples, people of African descent, women and children have seen the creation and operationalization of permanent forums at the United Nations, with decades officially dedicated to these groups by the United __________________ 19 20 21 16/21 See https://www.ohchr.org/documents/Issues/Minorities/GuidanceNoteRacialDiscrimination Minorities.pdf. See https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-minority-issues/regional-forums-minority-issues. The network has been reenergized in the past few years, adopting in 2020 a network workplan 2021 for the period 2021–2025 (available at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/ Issues/Minorities/UN_Network_Racia_Discrimination_Protection_Minorities_Workplan2021.pdf ); creating a checklist to strengthen United Nations work at the country level to combat racial discrimination and advance minority rights (available at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Issues/Minorities/AnnotatedChecklist.pdf); and holding a series of events to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (see https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/202202/Calendar-30th-Anniversary-1992-UN-Minorities-Declaration.pdf), among other things. 22-11516