A/HRC/49/46/Add.1 65. Concretely, minority communities have disproportionally higher rates of cancer and disease, more children with learning deficiencies or developmental challenges and lower life expectancies. It is difficult to deny that white communities tend to be better served by Government officials and that decontamination measures, well-maintained sanitary systems and more effective measures for the protection of aquifers and water supplies are more likely to be in place. 66. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur was particularly struck by the example of the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico. The United States military used the island as a live munitions target practice for about 60 years. According to internal United States Navy documents, on average, bombardments occurred 180 days out of the year. Moreover, the United States military used high-level depleted uranium munitions and bombs from 1972. Other forms of contamination, including heavy metal residues, exist because of the use Vieques as a munitions testing and warfare exercise ground. The result, as summarized at a town meeting on the lack of any visible clean-up, was simply “They bombed us, they made us sick, then they left us. They don’t give a damn”. 67. Even though the United States Navy stopped these exercises and withdrew from Vieques in 2003, the health consequences have continued to affect generations of residents, with cancer rates clearly higher for Vieques than for the rest of Puerto Rico. Some of these occupied lands were returned in 2001 to the municipality of Vieques, and others to federal and other agencies, such as the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust and the United States Department of Interior, including as a wilderness conservation area with no public access. No lands, strictly speaking, were returned to the local population. 68. While the United States Navy, with oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, has completed a significant clean-up, including of 4,332 acres of surface and 489 acres of subsurface cleared of munitions and weapons contamination, as at November 2021, the promised decontamination activities, including the clean-up of at least one highly contaminated site, under a national priorities list for long-term clean-up financed by the federal Superfund programme, have not progressed significantly. 69. Despite the approval by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in January 2020, of $39.5 million to help rebuild the hospital in Vieques that was damaged by Hurricane Maria, has still not been repaired, and local residents must travel to the main island, not always a simple task. The Special Rapporteur personally saw no visible renovations on the location almost two years later when he visited in November 2021. As a result, people are sick and dying because of unavailable medical treatments in Vieques. Puerto Ricans present at the town hall held by the Special Rapporteur in Vieques seemed convinced they are second-class citizens because of their ethnic background, and that what they are experiencing would not occur if they were members of a white Anglo-Saxon community on the mainland of the United States. A similarly widespread sentiment was expressed in Guam with regard to the highly toxic waste left behind by the United States military presence. Local residents felt that it would not have been left unaddressed for so long had it occurred on the mainland in a non-minority community. The Biden administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have recently committed to take action to address some of the longstanding environmental justice concerns on the island. XI. Conclusions and recommendations 70. The Special Rapporteur submits the following conclusions and recommendations with regard to the international obligations of the United States and the need for the current Administration to recommit to the global human rights architecture through concrete actions, including by: (a) Completing the ratification process for human rights treaties or protocols that would allow United States citizens to present individual complaints to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies; (b) Ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; 16