A/HRC/49/46/Add.1 still occur in some public schools despite constitutional, legislative and jurisprudential requirements that school officials acting in their official capacity not lead prayers or otherwise coerce or compel students to engage in prayer. Pro-religious bias is reported to be deeply engrained, and the constitutions of seven States still contain unconstitutional bans preventing non-religious people from holding office. Furthermore, there are reported incidents of religious minorities being excluded from accessing public services through private providers. In one recent incident, training services required by the Department of Children’s Services of the State of Tennessee were denied to a Jewish couple by a Statefunded adoption agency because they were not Christian. Tennessee legislation adopted in 2020 allows faith-based organizations to deny adoptions if they are inconsistent with an agency’s “religious or moral convictions or policies” to the “extent allowed by federal law”. Complicating this evident discrimination is the fact that federal law in the United States under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 only specifically prohibits discrimination based on race, colour, or national origin – but not on religion – in programmes or activities that receive federal funding. Finally, since the judgment of the United States Supreme Court in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia in 2021, corporations and other legal entities can claim under United States law their “freedom of religion or belief” as individual persons. Such an approach is inconsistent with international human rights law since freedom of religion or belief is an individual right available only to humans, not corporations. IX. Situation in the overseas territories of the United States 58. The majority of the people living in the overseas territories of the United Sates (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands) are members of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, even if they are also considered to be indigenous peoples with associated rights in relation to selfdetermination. In addition, these territories are considered under Chapter XI of the Charter of the United Nations to be Non-Self-Governing Territories, meaning “territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government”. While Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands are no longer on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, in 1972 the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples determined that a colonial relationship existed between the United States and Puerto Rico. Similarly, many residents of Guam consider that their island has been colonized by the United States. 59. There are different categories of rights holders in international law in overseas territories, which may overlap but are not necessarily exclusive: indigenous peoples; colonial peoples in the “Non-Self-Governing context”; and national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. Indigenous peoples who are not in a colonial context have a distinct legal status under Chapter XI of the Charter of the United Nations. In some contexts, individuals who are members of a group of indigenous peoples could also be, in addition to any other status as a people, members of a linguistic or religious minority. These are distinct legal categories that can overlap and be neither exclusive nor detrimental to each other. The individual human rights of minorities have no consequence on the collective rights that indigenous peoples and peoples in a colonial relationship may have under international law The populations of overseas territories and other Non-Self-Governing Territories are separate and distinct peoples with the right to self-determination, while some of the individuals in those territories may, at the same time, constitute minorities in matters of language, religion or culture. 60. During the visit of the Special Rapporteur to Guam, a major concern was expressed with regard to the control of the United States military over approximately one third of the island and the serious contamination of the land and drinking water allegedly caused by military activities. Moreover, a firing range complex is currently under construction above an aquafer that provides 90 per cent of the water in Guam. Military construction is also taking place in ancestral lands containing ancient burial sites. Such sites are do not have similar levels of protection as other indigenous sites such as Native American sites on the mainland of the United States. 14

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