A/52/498 English Page 4 IV. A. TREATY BODIES Human Rights Committee 11. During the period under review, the Human Rights Committee continued to monitor the observance of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It considered and commented on a number of reports submitted by States parties to the Covenant, with specific reference to the implementation of article 27 on the rights of persons belonging to minorities.1 12. In its concluding observations on the report of France (CCPR/C/60/FRA/4), the Committee took note of the declaration made by France concerning the prohibition prescribed under article 27 of the Covenant against denying ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities the right, in community with members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion or to use their own language. The Committee was, however, unable to agree that France was a country in which there were no ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. The Committee wished to recall that the mere fact that equal rights were granted to all individuals and that all individuals were equal before the law did not exclude the existence in fact of minorities in a country, nor did it exclude their entitlement to the enjoyment of their culture, the practice of their religion or the use of their language in community with other members of their group (para. 24). 13. In its concluding observations on the report of India (CCPR/C/60/IND/3), the Committee noted with concern that discrimination against members of the underprivileged classes and castes and other minorities constituted an impediment to the implementation of the Covenant, including article 27. The Committee recommended that further measures be adopted, including education programmes at national and State levels, to combat all forms of discrimination against those vulnerable groups (paras. 5, 8, 15). 14. In its concluding observations on the report of Slovakia, the Committee noted with concern, with respect to article 27, that no steps had yet been taken to adopt legislation to implement the provisions of the Constitution on the use of minority languages, and that as a consequence the use of minority languages in official communications had not been secured. The Committee recommended that legislation be adopted to secure language rights for minorities, with due consideration to the provisions of the Covenant and the Committee's general comment on article 27 (23 (50)). The Committee also expressed concern that insufficient provision, in particular in relation to allocation of resources, had been made in the field of educational and cultural rights for the benefit of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia (para. 24). 15. In its concluding observations on the report of Bolivia (CCPR/C/79/Add.74), the Committee expressed concern that despite the legislation enacted to allow the indigenous communities to enjoy the use of their traditional lands in a communal way, discrimination and other obstacles to the full enjoyment of the rights protected under article 27 of the Covenant continued to exist. The Committee recommended that measures be taken to ensure that the members of indigenous groups enjoyed fully their rights under article 27 of the Covenant, /...