E/CN.4/2006/16 page 2 Summary This report is submitted by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance pursuant to resolution 2005/64 adopted by the Commission on Human Rights at its sixty-first session. It expands on the comments made by the Special Rapporteur when introducing his interim report (A/60/283) before the General Assembly at its sixtieth session. The present report should be read in conjunction with the reports on the question of political platforms which promote or incite racial discrimination (E/CN.4/2006/54) and on the situation of Arab and Muslim populations in various regions of the world (E/CN.4/2006/17) submitted by the Special Rapporteur to the Commission at the current session. Since the Commission’s previous session, the Special Rapporteur has, in all his activities, relied on a dual approach: close monitoring and analysis of old and new forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, and a dual strategy to combat them: both political and legal as well as cultural and ethical. The political and legal strategy, in consonance with the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, is based on two major priority government measures: the expression of a firm political will to combat racism, and the adoption and implementation of national legislation against racism, discrimination and xenophobia. The intellectual and ethical strategy must seek to promote better understanding of the deep cultural roots of racism, and its ideological, cultural and psychological foundations, processes and mechanisms. In 2005 the Special Rapporteur conducted two visits. The first was to Japan, from 3 to 12 July 2005, and the second to Brazil, from 17 to 26 October 2005. The details of these visits and the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations appear in his reports to the Commission (E/CN.4/2006/16/Add.2 and Add.3). For the Special Rapporteur, the existence of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance is indicative of the following ominous trends: the resurgence of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, fed by intolerance and hostility towards immigration, the general increase in the defamation of religion, in particular, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, and more particularly, Islamophobia, the increasing importance in identity constructs of a rejection of multiculturalism, a tendency to establish a hierarchy in racial discrimination, the increasingly overt intellectual legitimization of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, the acceptance as normal of racism through the pervasiveness in the programmes of democratic parties of racist and xenophobic political platforms taken from extreme right-wing parties, and the increase in racism in sport, in particular, football.