A/HRC/49/46 Overall, many if not most of the efforts of the United Nations seem to be oriented more towards post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery efforts than conflict prevention initiatives.32 36. The result in recent years is a sanitized emphasis on “equality for all people” or “entire populations”, essentially expunging any language that would acknowledge that most contemporary conflicts involve grievances of exclusion, discrimination and inequality – as well as increasing xenophobia and hate speech targeting ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. At most, there are only a few references to religion or ethnicity when addressing human rights concerns more broadly. For example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in one of its reports on conflict, recognizes that “a growing body of evidence has shown that patterns of inequality, discrimination and exclusion are at the centre of the social and political grievances driving many of today’s conflicts” and that “even as extreme deprivations are declining, new forms of inequalities are emerging, which [are] straining social cohesion and the ability of societies to build and sustain peace”. However, it never actually clarifies from where these grievances arise or who the main victims of these new forms of inequalities are, thus avoiding referring to minorities or group-based grievances along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines. 33 To be fair, other UNICEF reports were more straightforward, admitting that grievances and inequalities between groups became mobilized along ethnic, religious or political lines at the community level, and that elite or majority group dominance of community decision-making could lead to a lack of representation and/or recognition of the needs of other groups. 34 37. The Special Rapporteur has also had exchanges with a number of United Nations human rights officials in countries currently the scene of violent conflicts who even deny the existence of minorities in conflict contexts. In the case of the minority Houthis in Yemen (Zaydis constitute about 35 per cent of the population), one United Nations official argued that the Special Rapporteur could not address concerns relating to the Shiites because the Houthis “control part of the country” and were therefore “not a minority”. In the case of the Tigrayans in Ethiopia, although they represent only about 6 per cent of the entire population of the country, they were “dominant in the past” so they therefore should not be considered to have any human rights as a minority under international law, according to another United Nations official.35 These comments reflect a restrictive approach in which certain minorities are considered not “deserving” of protection and which is based on a variety of views that are, at times, personal and even arbitrary. A small number of countries also formally or implicitly reject the “existence” of minorities in general or with only a few exceptions (including France and Greece), or only “recognize” ethnic, religious or linguistic groups as constituting a minority as understood in international law (such as Russian-speaking noncitizens in Latvia; the English-speaking minority in Cameroon; Basques, Catalans and Galicians in Spain; and Rohingya in Myanmar). 38. What has been described to the Special Rapporteur as increasingly obvious antiminority biases or attitudes – even from within the United Nations – may in part explain the apparent denial of the relevance of the minority dimension in dealing with many of the world’s increasing number of conflicts. It may also be one of the reasons that the focus on 32 33 34 35 See United Nations, Peacebuilding Commission, “Mandate”. Available at https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/commission/mandate. See also United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research, “Conflict prevention and sustaining peace”. Available at https://cpr.unu.edu/research/researchareas/conflict-prevention-and-management#overview. UNICEF, “UNICEF and sustaining peace: strengthening the socio-economic foundations of peace through education, young people’s engagement and WASH – UNICEF thematic paper contribution to the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2020 peacebuilding and sustaining peace report”, p. 5. Available at https://www.unicef.org/media/96551/file/Thematic-paper-for-2020-sg-report-mf.pdf. UNICEF, “Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy in Conflict-Affected Contexts Programme: UNICEF 2013 annual consolidated report”, New York, June 2014, pp. 5 and 19; and UNICEF, “Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy in Conflict-Affected Contexts Programme: UNICEF 2014 annual consolidated report”, New York, June 2015, pp. 14–15. Neither of these personal and restrictive views as to which group constitutes a minority in the United Nations human rights system has a valid basis. See the Special Rapporteur’s report on what constitutes a minority (A/74/160) and his report on the significance and scope of the four categories of minorities – national or ethnic, religious and linguistic – in the United Nations system (A/75/211). 9