A/HRC/17/40/Add.2 in Parliament of Members from the Malay, Indian and other minority communities”, according to article 39A of the Constitution. The official and laudable rationale behind the 1988 introduction of GRCs was to ensure that the needs, concerns and views of minority groups would not be ignored or neglected in an ethnically Chinese-dominant Singapore. Further, the authorities claimed that this measure would help counter the tendency of voters to vote along ethnic lines. Under the GRC scheme, voters therefore elect on a “one person, one vote” basis a team of Members of Parliament (rather than an individual Member of Parliament), of which there must be at least one minority candidate from a designated ethnic background. While the Special Rapporteur understands the well-intentioned rationale behind the GRC system, he was told that this scheme had actually institutionalized and entrenched the minority status of certain ethnic groups within Singaporean society. It was underlined that the system reinforced the views that members of minority groups were not electable on their own and that they needed to be part of a group of Members of Parliament to be able to get a seat in the Parliament of Singapore. 34. The Special Rapporteur would like to express his concerns vis-à-vis the abovementioned schemes. Indeed, he takes the view that they may tend to reinforce and perpetuate ethnic categorization, which in turn may lead to certain prejudices and negative stereotypes held against certain minority groups taking root. The Special Rapporteur believes that the benefits of a society that allows for more permeability between delimited ethnic categories and in which social interactions are not predetermined by ethnic identity cannot be overemphasized. In this context, he would like to suggest, as a starting point, that the identification documents should not indicate the ethnic background of individuals. While he was informed during his mission that this practice had been made more flexible to enable individuals of mixed origins to display several ethnic backgrounds, the Special Rapporteur nonetheless would like to emphasize that removing the ethnic background of individuals from identification documents would represent an important step in order to accord less significance to the ethnic identity in one’s interactions with the State and within Singaporean society at large. C. Housing 35. In 1989, the Government introduced the Ethnic Integration Policy in order to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves and, more generally, to promote racial harmony. Under this policy, each of the main ethnic groups, i.e. Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians, has a maximum quota of homes that may be rented or purchased by them in each public housing block and neighbourhood. Once the maximum quota has been reached for a particular ethnic group, no further sale or rental of apartments to members of that group will be allowed, unless the transaction is between members of the same ethnic group. Flexibility may be exercised vis-à-vis mixed couples, so that they may choose if they want to be considered as pertaining to one ethnic group or the other. During his mission, the Special Rapporteur was informed that a quota for permanent residents had been introduced in March 2010. 36. The Special Rapporteur was told by almost all his interlocutors that this policy had been generally successful in terms of social integration. Indeed, it allows the great majority of Singaporeans8 from diverse ethnic backgrounds to mix together. As a result, almost 8 representation constituencies (GRCs). Parties must field a team of five or six candidates in each GRC; the winning team is elected “en bloc” under a first-past-the-post system, as are individual Members of Parliament. The Special Rapporteur was informed that more than 80 per cent of Singaporeans live in public housing. 11