A/HRC/49/46/Add.1 the more complex and rapidly changing challenges of the digitized twenty-first century, including increasing inequalities between have and have nots, rapid movements of people and goods across borders and the nearly unconstrained megaphones of xenophobia, racism, hate and incitement to violence reaching millions through social and other media. 21. Along the same lines, both United Nations human rights mechanisms and civil society organizations in the United States have expressed concern about the absence of a national human rights institution in line with the principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (Paris Principles). The need for an interagency federal body responsible for implementation and follow-up to the recommendations of United Nations human rights mechanisms has also been pointed out to the Special Rapporteur. 22. The Special Rapporteur has been presented with convincing evidence that millions of Americans, particularly minorities, are facing growing inequality, discrimination and even exclusion, facing dramatic increases in hate speech and hate crimes and challenges and threats caused by environmental degradation and growing economic, health and educational disparities, leaving a disproportionate proportion of minorities behind. Building a better America requires a new deal for the twenty-first century for all Americans, and is most needed for the most marginalized and vulnerable minorities. The United States needs a comprehensive human rights infrastructure, vision and legislation that includes the creation of a national human rights entity for the promotion and protection of human rights consistent with the Paris Principles. 23. There is also a particular historical and social context that warrants a specific focus on African Americans, particularly in the wake of the tragedic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others. Submissions and testimonies to the Special Rapporteur have made it abundantly clear that African Americans are among the most marginalized minorities in the country in socioeconomic terms, are by far the most likely to be denied the right to vote in federal and State elections, to be incarcerated, to be the targets of hate speech on social media and to be disproportionally discriminated against. In the near future, other United Nations special procedures, including the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, will focus more on the particular predicament of African Americans. The United States is to be commended for inviting the former to conduct a mission to the country in 2023. The Special Rapporteur urges the Government to also invite the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent for a follow-up meeting to its mission of January 2016, since the Working Group would be in a special position to consider the complex discussion over whether the federal Government should compensate the descendants of former enslaved people to redress the country’s legacy of slavery, whether this should take the form of reparations and what form such reparations should take. IV. Right to effective political participation of minorities, particularly the right to vote and to political representation 24. A focus of the visit of the Special Rapporteur, one of the core international human rights and the foundation stone of democracy in the United States is the right, as set out in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, and without unreasonable restrictions, to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors. 25. Effective protection of this fundamental human right is weak in the United States. While the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution prohibit some forms of discrimination in voting, and despite the adoption of the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, implementation of the right to vote and to political representation continues to be problematic. Until 2013, the legislation passed in 6