A/74/160 Recommendations 57. The Special Rapporteur invites OHCHR, United Nations entities and Member States to support and collaborate in the organization of regional forums on minority issues in order to complement and enrich the work and recommendations of the Forum on Minority Issues by providing contributions and insights which are more contextualized and more accessible for stakeholders in other regions. 58. The Special Rapporteur calls upon UNHCR, the Secretary-General, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, as a matter of urgency in view of the risk and scale of the crisis emerging in Assam, India, with millions of members of minorities soon being deemed foreigners, treated as non-citizens and possibly finding themselves stateless, to consider immediate discussions and actions on this issue with the Government of India in order to protect the human rights of those involved and avoid what could easily become a threat to regional peace and security. 59. The Special Rapporteur invites United Nations entities to take note of the following working definition on the concept of a minority under article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and of the Human Rights Committee’s jurisprudence and comment on who is a member of a minority in order to adopt and apply more consistently a common approach and understanding and therefore more effectively ensure the full and effective realization of the rights of persons belonging to minorities: An ethnic, religious or linguistic minority is any group of persons which constitutes less than half of the population in the entire territory of a State whose members share common characteristics of culture, religion or language, or a combination of any of these. A person can freely belong to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority without any requirement of citizenship, residence, official recognition or any other status. 60. In this regard, he recommends in particular that OHCHR, other United Nations entities and the treaty bodies and special procedures review how they publicly describe who is considered a minority and replace their approaches with the Special Rapporteur’s and Human Rights Committee’s approach so as to avoid confusion and contradiction within the United Nations. In particular, he urges avoidance of the use of definitions that have previously been rejected by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. 61. He invites in particular the United Nations network on racial discrimination and protection of minorities to take note of the views of the Special Rapporteur and Human Rights Committee on the concept of a minority and integrate their understanding, and the Special Rapporteur’s working definition, into their activities and publications where appropriate. 19-11967 19/19