A/HRC/61/41 marginalization of minority communities, leading to forms of severe discrimination against non-Han minorities, such as Tibetans or Uighurs.62 2. Migration 77. Despite most societies having become sedentary, people move. They may be forced by dire living conditions in their place of origin (and in some narrowly defined cases they may claim refugee status) or be attracted by better life prospects in other countries. When settled in a significant number in their new country of residence, such groups become minorities, whether recognized as such by State authorities or not, and minority issues arise. Some public authorities recognize such situations and adapt their practices and regulatory frameworks to accommodate these new minority groups. For example, Slovakia recognized in 2023 the Vietnamese population as a national minority.63 At the local level, the city of San Francisco, United States, since 2009, acknowledging the presence of numerous speakers of minority languages in its constituency, issued a Language Access Ordinance, 64 which requires city departments to provide language access services in four languages: English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog (a language of the Philippines). Emerging minority issues are not linked to the reasons for displacement. The situation of persons of African descent, who were forcefully displaced as enslaved labourers in many countries worldwide, and especially in the Americas, is also a minority issue. However, it is dealt with by another special procedure mechanism65 and will therefore not be further considered in the present report. 3. Decolonization 78. Decolonization in the second half of the twentieth century, under the Charter of the United Nations, was justified by the principle of self-determination of peoples.66 However, in practice, it was rather territories (former colonies that kept colonial “administrative borders”,67 according to the principle of uti possidetis68) that were decolonized, rather than specific people exercising their right to self-determination. As a result, many of the States that came into existence during this second wave of decolonization have State territories encompassing several (and sometimes a myriad of) ethnic, religious or linguistic communities, such as Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 69 and Zambia. Minority issues in this context therefore do not describe the relations between one majoritarian group and some minority groups, but rather between groups within multi-ethnic or multinational States. In that respect, many features of “minority rights” that have been conceived and developed with the perspective of national minorities confronted with a dominant national majority would deserve to be revisited to consider those very different situations. 79. The first wave of decolonization mostly took place during the nineteenth century, for the benefit of colonist populations emancipating themselves from the metropolitan power. That was the case in Australia, the United States and New Zealand, as well as in the most southern part of the African continent. Except in Africa, where the power of former colonists was successfully challenged in the 1990s, in the wake of the second wave of decolonization, the marginalized communities facing minority issues in these decolonized countries are the autochthonous populations, nowadays categorized as Indigenous Peoples. Despite facing 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 14 Fei Yan and Liz Jackson, “Nation building, citizenship education and ethnic minorities in Chinese textbooks”, Citizenship Teaching and Learning, vol. 19, No. 2. See www.dw.com/en/vietnam-slovakia-ties-to-improve-thanks-to-new-slovak-pm/a-68747303. See https://media.api.sf.gov/documents/Language_Access_Ordinance-_Amended_June_2024.pdf. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, entitled Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. See Nicolas Levrat, “La prise en considération de l’ordre juridique étatique dans la définition des frontières internationales”, in Olivier Corten et al. (eds.), Démembrements d’États et délimitations territoriales : l’uti possidetis en question(s), (Editions Bruylant, Bruxelles, 1999). Olivier Corten, “Droit des peoples à disposer d’eux-mêmes et uti possidetis: deux faces d’une même médaille ?” in Démembrements d’États et délimitations territoriales : l’uti possidetis en question(s). United Nations Development Programme. “Marginalized minorities in development programming: a resource guide and toolkit”, 2010. GE.25-20927