A/HRC/58/34 supportive of minority artists. In this context, OHCHR organized a series of workshops and exhibition tours on arts and minority rights with a dozen public schools, in partnership with the Department of Public Instruction of Geneva. A global communication campaign featuring minority artists was also launched to raise awareness of the crucial role played by minority artists as human rights defenders. 22. In September, OHCHR Moldova strengthened the capacity of the new members of the Specialized Commission of the National Human Rights Council under the Ministry of Education and Research to promote and protect the rights of minorities. This training was a continuation of the expert and technical support provided by OHCHR to the Specialized Commission to monitor the implementation of the new recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. B. Efforts of United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms aimed at preventing and addressing acts of discrimination 23. In April, in its decision on the Sudan adopted under the early warning and urgent action procedure, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed alarm at the increase of ethnically motivated violence since the outbreak of hostilities in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, targeting, respectively, members of Arab tribes from Darfur and Kordofan and members of the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa communities, and urged Sudan to address and prevent further escalation of ethnic violence, incitement to racial hatred and racist hate speech. The Committee urged Sudan to, inter alia, ensure the equal protection of all its population from ethnic violence and hatred, guarantee the safety, security and enjoyment of equal rights to members of all ethnic groups, and ensure meaningful participation by different components of society, including ethnic groups, in the efforts to achieve peace. It called upon the international community to continue monitoring the situation in Sudan and to strengthen efforts to prevent further violence and violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law, including violent acts targeting people on the basis of their ethnic origin.13 24. In April, a group of independent United Nations human rights experts sent an allegation letter to the Government of Israel concerning information received, inter alia, about a number of alleged human rights violations in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023, including increased online harassment and targeting of Palestinians for their social media activity, particularly Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem.14 Without prejudging the accuracy of those allegations, the experts expressed deep concern about the criminalization and repression of Palestinian citizens in Israel, the discriminatory, disproportionate and unjustified censorship of Palestinian voices and the dissemination of hate speech, incitement to violence and dehumanization of Palestinians. The experts called on the Government of Israel to implement the threshold test of the Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination hostility or violence, 15 which set the right balance between protecting freedom of expression and prohibiting incitement to hatred, based on a case-by-case assessment of the context, speaker, intent, content, extent of dissemination and likelihood of harm. 25. In July, a group of United Nations experts issued a joint statement expressing grave concern over a reported upsurge in discrimination and violence against the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, reflecting an atmosphere of widespread hostility towards Ahmadis. The experts welcomed the adoption by the Pakistan National Assembly, in June, of a resolution that strongly urged federal and provincial governments to ensure the safety and security of all citizens of Pakistan, including religious minorities. They stressed, however, that such good-faith efforts to counter discriminatory discourse would be ineffective unless 13 14 15 6 See www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/sudan-un-committee-urges-end-ethnic-violence-andhate-speech-calls-immediate. See communication ISR 6/2024, available at https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/ DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=28834. A/HRC/22/17/Add.4, annex, appendix. GE.25-00006