 how to respond to situations of racism and xenophobia affecting displays and stateless persons. We have received, I must say, numerous requests from you, from colleagues in the field in the recent months, that it would be good to have an opportunity to have a dedicated session on racism and xenophobia. And this is why we are here today. And so that everybody feels comfortable, and we can maximise this session. We would like to ask, please, that you keep your microphones on mute so that we can hear each other and not to have too many disruptions. But on the contrary, we invite you to be very active in the chat so you can share your comments, observations, ideas, questions, examples. We will be constantly monitoring the chat so that we can also bring your examples and questions to the panellists and get some reflections on them. So we invite you strongly to use the chat along the session. So with that, we are actually very fortunate today because we have several distinguished guests that joined us, starting from Madeleine Garlig, who is the Head of Protection Policy and Legal Advice Section in the Division of International Protection in UNHCR, who will share with us the welcoming and opening remarks to the webinar, but also present the guide that UNHCR is launching on racism and xenophobia, followed by three panellists. And we will start with Mona Rich-Mawi, who is the Chief of Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch in OHCHR, followed by Gay McDowell, who was actually the first UN Special Rapporteur at the time, independent expert on minority issues and vice chair, also of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, served that many of you know very well. And we will hear also from our dear colleague Juan Pablo Terminello, who will share with us perspectives from the Regional Bureau in Americas on how they tackle and respond to situations of racism and xenophobia. We will actually change the order starting from Gay, then going to Mona and then Juan Pablo, but without any further delay, I would like to give the floor to Madeleine, over to you please. Thank you very much, Valerie, and really let me thank all participants sincerely for joining us today. I'd also like to extend particular thanks to all of the colleagues who were involved in preparing this webinar, including notably our co-convener, the UN Network on Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. There's clearly considerable momentum around the need to tackle racism and xenophobia as recent events and public debates in many countries have highlighted. What we see is clearly a recognition of the need to address the phenomena of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance in their many forms, and to work on fostering greater tolerance and inclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic, I think, has brought starkly to light systematic inequalities and barriers, including many linked to racism and xenophobia in some contexts, which have hindered access to testing and treatment or resulted in stigmatization and targeted measures that can threaten people's lives. It's thus very timely for us to come together today. I'd like to recall the three main aims of our discussion that have been included in the invitation to today's meeting. Firstly, to seek to share and exchange on the role and experiences of many of the stakeholders that are taking part today as concerns racism and protection of minorities in the course of their work. Secondly, we'd like to advance thinking on development of practical strategies and efforts to prevent and address racism and xenophobia affecting displaced and stateless persons, amongst others. And third and finally, we'd like to draw from the guidance that UNHCR has published, which is being presented today, but also from the perspectives of experts and other participants in order to enable us to identify more opportunities for collaboration in support of displaced and stateless populations affected by racism and xenophobia. As some further brief background to the discussion, I think it's worth recalling that from UNHCR's point of view, this issue has a specific resonance and priority for us. This comes about firstly because racism and related intolerance are frequently root causes of displacement. Secondly, however, they can compromise and undermine the protection that is and needs to be afforded to UNHCR's persons of concern. For example, they may manifest themselves through official restrictions on access to asylum or territory or inadequate standards of treatment afforded to those seeking asylum or recognised as refugees or otherwise in need of international protection. We also see that displaced persons may be denied the full enjoyment of human rights in some contexts, which can hamper the achievement of durable solutions, including through opportunities to integrate effectively and to contribute to their host communities. Furthermore, we see instances in which discrimination on the basis of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin can be a recurring reason for the deprivation or denial of nationality and therefore can be a cause of statelessness in many cases. UNHCR is strongly committed to working with key partners on counterings, xenophobia, racism and related intolerance in line with its human rights engagement strategy. UNHCR collaborates closely with relevant UNHR mechanisms, OHCHR and regional and national organisations in order to combat these phenomena. Amongst other foreign which we do this is the network on racial discrimination and minorities as a key partner and our co-convener. Allow me now to present some key elements from UNHCR's recently issued guidance on racism and xenophobia, addressing the ways in which UNHCR can address and respond more effectively to situations of racism and xenophobia affecting persons under its mandate. The guide aims to equip UNHCR operations as well as its partners as it's a public document, more effectively to identify, prevent and respond where needed to racism and xenophobia affecting our persons of concern. Recognising that these challenges are not new and that there is much good work that we can draw upon which has been done in the past, the guide builds on UNHCR's 2009 strategic approach to combating racial racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. These already identified a number of concrete areas listed on the slide there in which colleagues were encouraged and took concrete action over the past decade in order to try and advance on these issues. So drawing on the experience of efforts to implement this strategic approach as well as geopolitical developments improved and even thinking and experience since then the 2020 HCR guide amongst other things moving to the next slide seeks to define a number of key concepts relating to the prevention of and response to racism and related intolerance including principles of equality and non-discrimination, racism, prejudice, stigma, intolerance, hate speech and hate crimes. Recognising that there are many different understandings of these notions and that it's important to seek to have some common approaches as the basis for addressing them. The guide then moving to the next slide seeks to broaden UNHCR's engagement through a multi-stakehold approach which also of course reflects and seeks to implement the logic of the global compact on refugees. It seeks to provide a comprehensive legal and policy framework for UNHCR's interventions regarding racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in doing so provoses four building blocks which aim to underpin a comprehensive human rights based multi-vector and multi-actor approach. The guide proposes seven directions which UNHCR seeks to follow in addressing racism and xenophobia both in its internal policies and programs as well as its external and wider engagements and platforms. It then seeks to call for a broader, more strategic systemic commitment and engagement through these directions next slide please. You have here set out then what those directions are highlighted also in light of the historical racism, the structural racism, institutional racism and individual racism on which the guide also seeks to provide a background. All of this in a context which recognises the intersectionality of some of these issues and the need for an intersectional approach also to addressing them actively. I commend this table as well as the other key content elements that I have outlined here to your attention you are welcome to look at them further in the document itself which is publicly available on which you have the link posted there in the chat box by Peter. So we'd like to move then from here to a discussion hearing from our experts on some of these issues and also hoping to hear from all of you about ways in which UNHCR can improve its engagement working with partners in this key area. Before we move to that I'd like however to sincerely commend colleagues and operations for their efforts so far within UNHCR to address this issue as well as the strong interest that they have shown in the development of this guide and ensuring that its provisions and its content are as practical and as relevant as possible to the operational challenges which they're addressing today. It's going to be translated into Arabic, French and Spanish and we hope this will also increase its utility and accessibility for colleagues all around the world. We've heard many times in internal discussions over recent months how acutely relevant these issues are to UNHCR's work worldwide and how appreciative colleagues are of new tools and sources of inspiration to strengthen and improve their skills and their strategies to address this. We hope now to improve that further today in light of the insights we're going to hear and we look forward very much to hearing our experts speakers and their perspectives and thoughts on this for UNHCR and its partners in working in this area. Thank you so much and looking forward to the discussion. Over to you Valerie. Thank you so much Madeline for this very inspiring opening but also outlining the guide and an important piece for our discussion today and beyond. With that I will pass the floor directly to Gay Mcdowell as I mentioned before the first UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues at the time you were the independent expert but also as a former vice chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Over to you Gay please. Thank you very much. Good morning good afternoon, good evening, good night to each and all of you. I'm very happy to have been asked to spin this a little bit. We can hear you well I think I think you've been muted. Okay now it's okay. Okay so again I want to thank you for the invitation to join you and I also want to congratulate the network on the success of its work on this guide but also over the years on a number of projects that have worked to break down the silos of first of all of knowledge of contact of operations between all the different you know areas of the UN and really begin to share knowledge and share approaches in an important way and combatting racism and xenophobia as you all know as Madeline emphasized in her introduction you know these are among the most important goals of the United Nations of international community and were a central impetus for the formation of the United Nations but still in this era in this next century we find that not only is racism and xenophobia not only are they really still threatening every collective human endeavor around the world I would say that over the past decade faith is rising and spiking in incredible ways if you were to ask members of the committee the UN committee on the elimination of racism that I sat on for eight years what's been the most debling most in our country reviews of the last say decade the consequences of the flows of people the movement of extraordinary numbers of people from the global south to countries in the north this unprecedented flow of people as you know I think better than I in important ways has been the root cause racism and xenophobia and differences among groups the root cause of some of these massive flows but also as they touch on new societies as they move northern and they move through countries of transit and their final places of settlement they tend to especially if there are weak leaders in those countries and along the way these phenomena tend to exacerbate tensions that have been pre-existing in those societies and in those countries and so new communities of people tend to become scapegoats for long existing problems and I am sure that in the work of UNHCR this is front and center it has certainly been over the past say decade front and center and we like you have had to think anew about ways that we could deal effectively within the scope of our mandate and the problems presented from these new situations of migrant flows some countries came to us and said well actually this is not a part of your mandate and we were taken aback because it is in the black letter of the international convention but it has not been the focus of much of our practice until recently so I think it is very important this initiative and I hope that and I look forward to bringing a closer collaboration between members of CERD and the work of CERD the work of the unit on minorities and UNHCR both in headquarters and in the field there are a number of things that I really like about this guide and I just want to focus on a couple of them because I don't want to take up too much time first of all the section on key concepts I think is really extraordinarily good as it takes into account the black letter if you will many of the instruments we deal with not only ICERD international convention but the declaration on the rights of minorities and other conventions as well as those conventions that are directly on point with the questions of refugees stateless persons there is a lot from the inter-american convention against racism and racial discrimination and related intolerance a document that I was somewhat involved in the development of it is still relatively new among such legal documents but very relevant and important especially in the Americas but even further as a sort of example of how new thinking is handling these issues I think that it is very good the work that has been put in on the question of intersectionality I very few understand it which I find interesting but I think the contextual section of the guy which looks at issues of intersectionality which puts things in context of power dynamics and systems of oppression and understanding how it is sectorial if you will all of our lives are in all of these communities and beginning to think about how that can be actually dealt with and the question of historical injustices both historical injustices may have been the root causes for those who move and the historical injustices that are a part of the realities of communities that they move to and the way those dynamics interplay when new people, new communities come into form who have developed in ways good and bad of approaching the realities of their histories so I think it is an unusual document and trying to put all that forward in one guide to say look at this these are realities that have to be dealt with it is hard to give clear steps on how you take all of that into account because it presents in such different ways circumstances but it is very rare to have a document that says to people you must think about all of these dynamics on the ground and you must work with a wide range of people who have their own expertise and who can bring something of value to you in working out these problems in the ways that make important differences to your work there is much more to say about this I will say that the examples that you give from actual situations that have taken place and how they have been dealt with I think also is of extraordinary value and can be and should be used in a lot of different contexts not just UNHCR finally I will say this in order to see the section that considers how UNHCR can and should work in different ways with the committee on the elimination of racial discrimination that interactions for quite a long time as UNHCR personnel have come to the sessions and have given us briefings about various countries that we might be viewing at that time but I think let's face it during the three sessions a year that CERD has had we are under under extraordinary time pressure to deal and attempt to deal adequately with an incredible workload and that is unfortunate given the importance of the issues that we try to cope with. That having been said I really would love to see a deeper more thoughtful interaction between UNHCR and the committee I see from this work ways that that could be structured even if it is through a sort of yearly seminar of some sort or if you think about restructuring the presentation formats of UNHCR too sir so that it goes along this line because at this point we really have clear thoughts about your addressing situations of racism and xenophobia rather what we hear are how you feel the first countries are failing obligations under the legal instruments that are directly relevant to refugee status or statelessness and with the little time that we have it is hardly enough for us to go into an in-depth conversation along the lines of the outline of the guide that you present about how these situations really come out of and be into a larger paradigm of racism and xenophobia. We have to have that discussion. It's very important and I hope that we will all be able to think together about ways that that kind of fruitful interaction can be had. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. We are offering some of the opportunities UNHCR to strengthen the collaboration with the committee but also to depicting some of the key highlights from the guide and the references to intersectionality. It's important as well as working in partnerships and many others. Thank you very much for sharing also your experience. And speaking about partnerships I would like to give the floor to Mona Rishmawi who is the Chief of the Rule of Law Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch in OHCHR. Thank you very much. Mona, over to you. Can you see me? Yes, very well. Thank you. Thank you very good because I had to do a few maneuvers. Thank you and it's really a real pleasure to join the colleagues in UNHCR particularly the colleagues who work on the field and my dear friend Gaye who is always a pleasure to see her. She's such a... I don't want to say she's such an institution because of her knowledge and so much information about this issue moving the work for the protection of minorities and racism. So the remarks that she just delivered and her observations come out of really many years of experience of really pushing these issues at the UN level in the context of human rights but also at the country level so many of you may know or may not know Gaye was extremely involved in the anti-apartheid movement so her work goes back to those years when she was really in that front and now she's very much part of the discussion on the rights of people of African descent in the United States. So another big challenge that is ahead of us these days. Thank you very much Gaye also for your excellent remarks. I just want to... I have five main points that I will make one after another. One is that we sometimes forget this but actually racial discrimination is in our charter. Protection against racial discrimination is our charter. It's one of the foundations of both the United Nations as a whole but also for the protection of refugees already as it started from the League of Nations it was one of the few institutions actually that could do something about minorities was the refugee office which was started during the so you as UNHCR as a long history in the protection of minorities and they have a long history in protecting individuals who have been fleeing persecution and we should always remember that because you see for some countries or some states would say this is a politically charged issue. These are difficult issues. We can't really discuss these issues in our terms and I think we need to always as UN officials remind ourselves that this is core mandate. This is our charter this is our core mandate. We have to go to places and basically look very carefully at whether the identity of individuals and groups actually affect how they are treated and how their human rights is delivered. And unfortunately and that's my second point unfortunately UNHCR knows this extremely better very very well and as well as we know it in OHCR unfortunately many individuals in many countries are treated on the basis of their identity. Not what they do but on who they are. So national identities and ethnic identities and racial identities are really really core to how unfortunately states decide to realize rights or not for people. And as we know policies based on rejection of identity is basically as often we see it and ends up in displacement and statelessness and ends up with really very concrete and very difficult situations that we as the United Nations creates so called humanitarian crisis as you know there are more human rights crisis because these are crisis about how human beings are treated. So we have to always be very aware of that that this is really something that we need to work with all the time. The problem as we all know and as we face is that many times the policies are masked in ways that makes it a bit difficult for us to challenge it. So they don't come and say we are treating people badly because they belong to this ethnic group or this minority or they say it's anti-terrorism. It's protection of national security. It's about our nationality law it's about it's about immigration flow or migration flow is about how do we control our borders. So it makes it a bit more complicated for us to engage when it is not so out there in your face so to speak. So I think that's why I feel that your guidance the guidance that you just had is extremely important because it gives tools to tell us to tell UNHCR but also it's partners. I really think like what Gay said this is really pioneering and even us for UNHCR we can benefit a lot from that guidance that you put together. So I think it's really very well done. And I was particularly touched on that I was particularly touched by how you how the guidance looked at the drivers to what drives us to understand racism. So basically the various relationships that are constructed around it. And I think that's I think I haven't seen that being spelled out the way you spelled it out in that guidance. We see it a lot on access to host communities and not to discriminate between the host communities and the displaced communities and why and there is how the resentment around these issues develop. But you I like how you how it is put out you know that the relationship between each group of refugees and the host communities that it's often it's there is often racial prejudices around that that hampers relationships about who benefits and who doesn't. And if we work with a certain group it's the scenes I mean I'm just throwing it out there not because this you know the Rohingyas versus the people who are in that host community the Syrians versus the Lebanese villagers who are hosting them and all this stuff and it's a bit of a resentment and I like how you actually mention that I think that's really important. The relationship between the needs and local communities you know you bet you these were those were people who were benefiting from international protection and how the international protection was given to them and how they are facilitated to return and what is the relationship between that I thought putting your hand on that that's very very important. The relationship between groups of internal displayed persons and the IDPs and as well as within the groups themselves within the refugees because we always we kind of like assume and you see this in a number of countries you assume that when people are displaced and so on I remember that in my work on Darfur very very very well. You assume that you are in an IDP or a refugee camps and everything is homogeneous but as UNHCR knows very very well that tribal and ethnic relationships actually dominates a lot what happens there so I think the guidance the guidance that you are given here to look to look at it from basically how can we go beyond this prejudice how can UNHCR operational colleagues look at it also being very aware of these dynamics so I really really commend you and commend you UNHCR on this. My third point which I want to mention quite quite quickly but I think it's really important to me is that this I mean we are at the stage now and we saw it a lot with Black Lives Matters and what was happening around racial justice and I was the you know yesterday we also the inauguration and I was like almost counting how many times the word racial justice was actually mentioned and it's quite frequent by the new president of the United States and I was thinking would we have seen that like 10 years ago no we wouldn't have seen that 10 years ago we see it today because people are standing up for their rights people are saying enough is enough and I think we as the United Nations need to be part of this movement of legitimizing the struggle against racism and racial justice because as I say it's a core issue for us so all this stuff that is happening around the killing of George Floyd around the Black Lives Matters and around the movement around it throughout the world that I see it as a global movement standing up for not only personal rights but for each other's rights and for each other's dignity so and I think that's really important when we are working in areas which are not as closed as someone in New York or in Chicago and so on and they have the TV cameras and so on someone who's what is happening in places in really far away places that are not subject to TV cameras and social media and so on I think the same phenomena happens in many many countries it's just we don't see it so and we are discovering this very much as we are working to unpack what you know the relationship between law enforcement and racism and how law enforcement looks at racism and systemic racism and conditions of life that create that space I think that becomes extremely important the point that I want to stress don't look at it that this is happening in New York or happening in Washington and happening in London or in somewhere you know it is also happening in places that very close to home and where we are working and we need just to keep our eyes open and we need to make sure that we are actually taking in what the messages that the communities are actually telling us even if especially as a recipient communities for our so a lot of stuff is happening around that again it's happening because it's clearly because states are engaged because there is a human rights council but from our side as an office we are really trying to dig into places where might not be under the spotlight so with that I would like to really call on you if you feel that there are countries or situations that we need to look at it from that point of view from that angle please don't hesitate to send an email to colleagues in UNHCR the headquarters they know how to reach us but also to me and Claude my colleague who is on the call and don't hesitate to reach out to us she let me know she let us know so don't hesitate to reach out to us and to say actually have you looked at this situation there is something happening here that we need to look at my fourth point and it's really a quick fourth point if I can find it is to remind of two things that are happening and my fifth point is the network which I will end with but my fourth point is to remind that of basically that ASG himself has spoken out and has put something that he's calling a call to action and within that he's asking for he's basically wants us to develop what we call an agenda for protection and in articulating that agenda for protection and clearly you can imagine Volker is in the executive offices of the secretary general you can imagine you guys are at the center of this in that in formulating that agenda for protection the rights of minorities indigenous people he didn't mention after this and but they are in their point of view they are considered as part of minorities although we like to think of them as a separate group because in some countries like Brazil for example they are a majority but they are treated as a minority they are not represented in government they are not having access to the same political empowerment or economic empowerment although they are numerically they are actually the majority of the population so there are challenges in this area in considering people of African descent as I say in minority because sometimes it just doesn't fit so the ASG's call to action is really essential and it's basically looking at us to say how do we have an agenda of protection that basically connects the dots from the international system to the regional system to what is happening on national system and I was very happy to see emphasis on your guidance on national institutions and national actors that actually can bring that forward what I would really appreciate is if you have best practices if you think of things that could work that work it would be very good to feed that into UNHCR thinking thinking and our thinking you know if there are practices that you would like but also challenges I mean like recently I realized that in a number of countries national and human rights institutions which I did not even think about it didn't cross my mind don't even have the mandate to deal with racial justice and low enforcement issues because they don't have the mandate to deal with criminal law matters so it can be complicated but so if you spot some of these things please please please don't hesitate to come to us and my last point is about the partnership with UNHCR in the context of the network that we are working together on the network has been there for quite some time it's basically focused on racial discrimination and protection of minorities I think I mentioned about this minority majority all this stuff it's an important thing to keep in mind but I think what is important is that we have a system to work together on this I think we have around 24 I'm looking at the number I might be wrong 24 entities that are working together on this a lot of them are the specialized agencies but we also have OHCR and UNHCR I'll be very honest with you the big challenge for us is to make sure that within the UN system that we also have the political actors with us because I think we can continue to deal with these matters as humanitarian or as human rights issues but what we really what would make the difference is that when they are put on the table as for solutions when the political solutions are discussed by the UN so the importance of working together is really essential so bringing in not only the development actors the humanitarian actors but also the political actors around the table to discuss what we would do for the protection of minorities and on racial discrimination I think it has been really very very very important because the solutions are often political solutions as I say so and I think the network was there we created some guidance and so on and then it dipped a bit and now we are reviving it a lot because from our OHCR point of view we see a big need we see you know all the crisis around you we see a big need that the protection of minorities and the protection of persons irrespective of their identity is central to the work of the United Nations we feel that this is really important so working together on this is essential working together to feed into best practices making sure that we also connect at the field level the same institutions connect at the field level working together bringing the discussions that we have at HQ level to the field finding out alliances within the field structures within the country teams structures so that we can work together on these issues is really really central so I would like to finish by really commanding you on this initiative how much we appreciate the partnership with UNHCR we really believe that we are both OHCR and UNHCR are working together towards the same you know to achieve similar goals on this and we see a lot of synergies both at HQ and in the field and we look forward to a lot more collaboration on this and other issues so thank you very very much thank you very much Mona that was extremely rich also with the five areas that you outlined but also your suggestions on how we could even strengthen the collaboration and how to move forward and build on what is already there and also I would say how you linked the guide to our work on daily basis in the field in headquarters and the life around us in a broader sense so thank you very much Mona and I would like to give the floor to our last panelist who is Juan Pablo Terminello who will bring us the experience from the field from a region where racism xenophobia is a very big topic and give us some concrete examples for inspiration and ideas how they are tackling it over to you Juan Pablo thank you very much and thank you very much to colleagues and organizers for the participation in this panelist it has been a real pleasure to share with Mona and Gaia really I'm learning a lot and I would leave my minutes to them because I would like to continue hearing to them so thank you. The idea of my presentation, the aim of my presentation which would be very brief is to introduce you on some of the practices and initiatives that have been developed in the context of the Americas regarding violence, xenophobia and discrimination affecting persons of concern to UNHCR the adoption of UNHCR new guidance on racial discrimination has been a good opportunity for the Bureau to take stock of the situation the challenges at the regional level but also take stock of the different initiatives that have been and are continuing implementing in the Americas to address the issue and what I'm going to present to you is some of these initiatives that we consider are important and we would like to improve in the upcoming years Next slide please, I would use a presentation to facilitate Before entering into the practices I think it's important to put in context which is the situation in the Americas right now in terms of displacement as the region has been facing unprecedented numbers of persons displaced in the last years. We are right now account for 18% of population forcibly displaced in the world according to UNHCR global statistics and this is due mainly to different situations that have aggravated in the past years forcing thousands into cross-border displacement and also into situations of internal displacement. First of all the Venezuela situation with more than 5.5 million refugees and migrants from Venezuela is at the top of the situations leading to displacement in the Americas. Secondly we have the situation in North and Central America there are approximately half million refugees and asylum seekers from countries in Central America mainly from El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras but also if we add to this number the number of people in general displaced in those countries we might be reaching by now approximately one million people displaced in the context of North and Central America. The deterioration of the socio-political situation and economic situation and human rights situation in Nicaragua has also triggered numbers increasing numbers of Nicaraguans living and seeking international protection approximately 100,000 Nicaraguans have request asylum most of them in Costa Rica but also in Panama and in other countries in the region and then we have a historical situation of internal displacement affecting Colombia with more than a million internal displaced in Colombia even despite and even after the peace agreement that took place in 2016 displacement has continued to be a serious challenge for many Colombians in areas where armed groups or criminal groups continue to operate and the last situation that's also of concern to the region and which also involves high levels of discrimination and is connected as a root cause is the situation of violence which remain an issue in many countries in the Caribbean where we have stateless population or population at risk of stateless. Next please. Just to continue giving you some information about the background we have received during the past year increasing particularly after 2016 we have received and registered increasing number of asylum claims that led the Americas to became the largest recipient of asylum applications worldwide in 2019 approximately one million new asylum claims registered during the year. The increasing arrival of refugees and migrants in the context of the Venezuela situation or the situation in Central America and Nicaragua has exacerbated tensions with hosting communities the number of people displaced across border has increased significantly just to give you an example we have more than 1.7 million Venezuelans in Colombia approximately one million Venezuelans in Peru and even when the numbers are not so big in the islands Venezuelans and count for one out of five residents of the island which has transformed the landscape of all these countries and has leading to a mounting tension with local communities and these mounting tensions are connected with a scale resources in terms of access to social services or right like education healthcare and in the context of COVID-19 it has due to the impact socio-economic impact of COVID-19 this has exacerbated and we have a lot of competition for instance for the access to labor opportunities or livelihood opportunities which is leading also to increase xenophobia and discrimination and stigmatization of displaced population in this context. The other element that we need to take into account and it has become reality in the Americas in the last year is the implementation of restrictive migratory measures and border restrictions that are reinforcing stigmatizations against refugees and migrants and this is something that we have seen in the region because we have seen the beginning of this century a trend in changing and adapting migratory and refugee legislation to a human rights approach and now we are seeing these things changing and just to use some of the terms that Mona used we are seeing are increasing unmasked policies discriminating against people or migrants and refugees and this is a lot of this generates a lot of concern to us. Some of these new policies have specific requirements for refugees and migrants such as criminal records doing a very strong link or trying to establish a very strong link between migration or human mobility and criminality and insecurity in hosting communities or attempts to criminalize through criminal legislation irregular movements of migrants and refugees in the region. We have also been facing challenges in terms of access to rights and we have continued facing a lot of migrants refugees continue facing a lot of limitations in the access to rights and social services and the other thing is how this interact with political realities in the region and how increasingly we are seeing politicians in the Americas displaying toxic discurses against foreigners against migrants and refugees and it has been particularly of concern in the context of the Venezuela situation and the country's most affected by the arrival of people from this region. In terms of practice there are some key elements that we would like to highlight about that have served the purpose of better identify analyze and assess the reality of discrimination and xenophobia against population of concern and one of the key elements for the viewer has been the issue of monitoring and analysis and in this regard what we can highlight is how we have been using protection information management tools to better identify discrimination or trends of discrimination against population of concern and I'm going to give you just a few examples one is the use of regular protection monitoring tools at the regional level and or high frequency survey that is being collected at the regular it's regularly being collected at the regional level to identify patterns of discrimination not to identify why people is being discriminated or who are the people who feel discriminated but also where discrimination is taking place is it taking place in hosting community is it taking place in the labor in the labor sphere is it taking place when trying to access rights like health education is taking place when in the context of displacement not when we need to when people have to cross a border or initiate a migratory or asylum procedure we have been collected all this information through high frequency surveys connected all countries in the region and in the case of the Venezuela situation we have even been able to publish two reports of protection monitoring through a sub chapter on the issue of discrimination why people feel discriminated where they are facing discrimination we have also been working apart from this protection monitoring example which we are conducting at the regional level and now we are going to produce our pool for 2020 that's going to tackle the Venezuela situation but we will implicitly be tackling other regions and sub regions in the Americas we have also been working with specific profiling exercise or analysis addressing specific groups of people we forcibly display for instance one is and a report that we are prepared and we are drafting with the Organization of American States on the impact of COVID-19 on people with specific protection needs and this involves different groups including LGBTI people but also working on the situation of indigenous communities indigenous communities have been severely affected by displacement in the context of the Venezuela situation this displacement have caused a lot of challenges to UNHCR but also to all partners and states involved in the response on how we need to adapt our protection response to ensure the protection of indigenous groups rights and this is something that has become a real challenge for a region that did not have a strong experience in dealing with indigenous population displacement in massive numbers so one of the issues that we are going to focus is we are analyzing the situation of indigenous communities we are working a lot with community leaders and the idea is to have at the end of I think by the end of February in collaboration with the Organization of American States a discussion an open discussion involving indigenous communities and their leaders to understand where are the challenges to ensure the rights in this new context that we are facing in the Americas. One element which has been key to everything we are trying to do in terms of discrimination and xenophobia is the engagement with key partners and this is mainly in the region the involvement and the work with human rights mechanism at the UN level but particularly at the inter-american system level we have a long history of cooperation with inter-american system human rights in the region and we are using this long history and these very strong links to work on the issue of discrimination we are using our work with inter-american system to document the situation of discrimination that are taking place in the region the example is what we are doing groups in need of protection in the context of COVID and indigenous but the idea is to work with them to produce advocacy documents policy documents and specific reports that can inform what states are doing and what other partners are doing in responding to this situation and this is a very important advocacy and policy making actor this is the inter-american system is using the words of Mona it's a key political actor in the region to promote change in terms of human rights and now we are working more closely to them on the issue of discrimination we have historically been working with them on access to asylum access to the territory but now we are really engaging a lot in the issue of discrimination next slide please other just to reinforce some of the messages I think have been very important is the engagement with key stakeholders and if I have to choose one specific key stakeholder to mention is national human right institution we have our links with national human rights institution which pay a lot of support in key areas working on the issue of discrimination they have support and they work with us on the issues of monitoring situation of discrimination particularly in areas where it's very difficult for international actors to access and where they have strong presence through their offices but also through their links with the community so in terms of monitoring in terms of advocacy they are very powerful advocacy players because of the constitutional mandate they have in many countries because of the credibility they have in many countries they are a key advocacy player they are also involved in something that we have done in the region which is litigation and legal support national human rights institution not only provide legal support to individual in a specific case but also get involved many times in strategic litigation and they have been a key partner on that front just to give you a very brief example of the importance of national human rights institutions two years ago in January 2018 we faced a situation an outbreak of xenophobic violence in a very in a medium-sized city in Ecuador very close to the border at that time I was working in UNACI Ecuador senior protection officer the situation was extremely complex there was a crime committed by a Venezuelan refugee or migrant it was a heinous crime it was a femicide and suddenly we had a strong reaction from the local community against Venezuela where local actors were political local actors were playing a lot of very strong role in promoting violence and promoting xenophobia against Venezuelans it was an electoral local electoral context so the situation was very complex we managed to arrive very early to a situation the situation was terrible during a night Venezuela has been chased in the street the places where they were leaving the shelters were being chased they were being attacked hundreds of them were leaving the city by foot and when we managed to arrive there we didn't know very well where crime we started the situation was terrible and was the national human rights institution there it was the ombudsman that put at the lead of the movement and in one hour the national ombudsman has convened all local stakeholders the local government UNACR the ministry of social affairs the police director the bishop to a meeting and we were taking decisions on how to address and by the end of the day the situation was under control this is the key role and importance of these kind of players in this region I don't know in other regions but in this region this is the key role that they can play they can facilitate synergies to address situation of discrimination structural discrimination but also specific situations that might take place other key stakeholders with which we are working our parliaments and this is in terms of reviewing and legislation as I told you we have seen increasing initiatives of unmask legislation against refugees and migrants and working with parliaments providing comments has been essential to prevent these to move forward for instance attempts to ban certain nationalities to enter the country or to put requirements that are impossible to meet for certain nationalities attempts to criminalize irregular movements which is something that we saw in countries like Peru and with a very strong stigmatization discourse within the piece of legislation that was being presented engagement with judicial actors has been also a key action and we directly all through our partners have been challenging some of these legal policies and measures that have been limited the access to asylum or limited the access to the territory or limiting the access to rights and the last thing is something that we are promoting very very strongly since many years ago in 2024 when the Mexico plan of action was adopted we start talking about cities of solidarity and we start working more closely to local governments not only in delivering support and protection and assistance refugees but also to work in facilitating co-habitation with local communities and this is something key that we will plan to continue doing we have some initiatives at the regional level some of them are being funded by the European Union working on this initiative with other UN agencies such as UN Habitat, IOM and many others. Working with community based protection remain a key in the region working with community structures in many countries community structures are very powerful local councils in some communities where indigenous populations are strong like in the Indian region working with indigenous councils has paid a lot of support to our efforts to promote a pacific co-habitation or to dismantle the process against foreigners and refugees and also to visualize which is the positive impact of refugees and migrants in their communities. The other elements which are traditionally part of UN ACR work in this region are related to the work with the media and the working campaigns. I'm not going to mention this in detail but I would like to highlight that in the context of the response to the Venezuela situation coordination has played a key role and UN ACR is working as part of this international platform for the response to refugees and migrants from Venezuela which has replicated its structure at the national levels. So in many of these countries we have engaged with the platforms and all stakeholders playing in the platform which involves not only UN agencies but also tens of local organization and international organization but in some cases also national government local authorities in developing campaigns. Some of these campaigns and you have the link with UN ACR to share some of the positive impact of refugees and migrants in their communities but they have also worked a lot to take down all the myth around migration and around the arrival of refugees. We have also some campaigns have been developed at the regional level but also very strong campaigns in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador with the participation of representatives from the entertainment industry and also some efforts at the regional level to monitor discriminatory discourse in the media and in social media through the Peace Labs initiative in Costa Rica. In terms of working with media and journalists we have our colleagues in the public information section have tackled these at the regional level and what they have done is which is very important. They have partnered with very well known and prestigious regional institutions on media. One of them is the foundation Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the former Nobel Prize, has a foundation works a lot with journalists, they provide regular trainings to journalists and thousands of journalists for the region always try to access to these which are basis on merits, on profiles. So what we organized in 2020 were at least two workshops on how to deal with human mobility, one in the context of Venezuela and on the context of Central America just to provide tools to journalists on how to reflect on these realities, how to reflect these realities to establish distinctions between what is a refugee, what is a migrant, what are the protection needs of all these populations, which is the positive impact which are the challenges they face, which are the different profiles we found among people's presence for what's in this place. And the other one was in South America was journalists without tax punishments, periodismo sin etiquetas, which was an initiative organized also with the multiplicity of partners to tackle a journalist in the South American region. Next please. I will end up here. I think I am a vital if there's any question. Thank you again very much for the invitation and the possibility to participate in this. Thank you very often. Thank you Juan Pablo and indeed we have a lot to learn also from your experiences and the different initiatives you have been rolling out in America and we could spend the whole day on exchanging around them, but the time is passing and therefore I would bring to the panelists the questions that started to come through the chat box and I would invite colleagues to take advantage of the opportunity to ask questions, your comments, suggestions, ideas, and examples. I will start with the first round of questions and I will let the panelists to divide them between yourself. So the first one is is there in a pipeline or plant any initiative work around developing a universal list of racial categories, so more global initiatives around definitions and consensus around that. Second question is in relation to your views between the link of refugee protection and the organization cultural work on racial equity. So how do we link the work of protection of our persons of concern and the institutional work within our respective agencies? Thirdly with the COVID-19 situation we have seen the displaced persons have been linked to the spread of the virus unfortunately in many contexts. Do we have any good practice examples or even lessons learned on collaboration with health actors in this regard to combat racism, racial discrimination and also misinformation. So with those three questions I will turn back to the panelists and see how we would like to address responses to this initial set of questions. Over to you. Well maybe I can address the first one, which is whether or not there's any work going on to further elaborate who are the kinds of the groups of people that fall in the protected group under let's say the International Convention on Racial Discrimination. And yes there's work going on all the time and I want to first of all refer you to the general recommendations of CERD because over the years CERD has expanded. We would say really elaborated further those categories that you can see in the black letter of article one of the convention. So as to add or clarify that Indigenous peoples falls within the category of protection that garlics and people within the scheduled task if you will fall within those categories that in many situations people with medical conditions like albinism fall within those categories that actually although there's been a lot of controversy about people who are facing problems because of their religious identification that we thought of ways in which and circumstances under which people such as the Rohingya certainly fall within the category of protected groups under the racism convention. So yes the group is being as I say elaborated on on a continuous basis but you know I think that to the extent that there are specific questions about specific groups it would be I think useful to pose those questions to CERD and that may trigger thinking with the outcome of a general recommendation that in very clear terms might include that category. It would be useful to know exactly who you're talking about but yes there's more than what you can see on the surface of article 1 in terms of the groups of people who are considered to be protected under ICERD. Mona did you want to come in? Thank you very much. I think I'll just briefly on the of course I agree entirely with Gaye on the first question on the second question on how do we balance the work with beneficiaries work with the people that we work with with our own human rights and I think that's really really an important point. As you know the a number of institutions UNHCR for example has a diversity officer. So they're basically the key is really to look in terms of how do we look at our own diversity and our own inclusion and our own policies and practices and to look deep at ourselves. I think that's really really hard. ASG as you know has established the task force to look at our internal structures, particular racism and as you know there was this survey some time ago. But I think now it's really the time is very opportune to look deeper at each and every organization and there is a lot of organizations that are doing that including in the private sector. I think this is something that we cannot really push under the table and I think the result frankly of really people standing up globally for their own rights is that there is a lot more awareness within organizations that this is something that we need not only to look deeper but to fix the way I explained to my colleagues the way I look at it is that we need the UN to be fit for purpose it's not about personal interest. I think the moment we see it as a personal interest just about us and me and my promotion and my I think we are losing something there. I think so it's beyond unconscious bias and people being overlooked and all this stuff. I think the problem is that if we don't have proper diversity of voices in a very complicated complex world that is very interconnected but this interconnectedness is making us, making people look more in silos and basically affirmations of their own point of view the UN will be losing something very important. So diversity frankly is very important for the UN for the next 10, 15, 20 years but it's something that we need to work on in a constructive way. We cannot just work on it as something that you know it's me versus them versus that. Now a few trainings on unconscious bias making sure that on every panel there is no I think we need to look at it as a strategic as a goal of strategic importance relevance I think. If we don't do it as part of the relevance of the organization of what is going on today I think we lose the fight because I think with what the way the world is today is really that's what the UN brings to the table is the ability to speak with multiple voices but in the same strategic direction and that diversity of voices and diversity of views and diversity has to be heard within the organization has to be expressed within the organization. Last thing I'll say about that is that I think there is a lot of awareness. A few years ago you know a lot of people would sit in panels with no women and have no problem with that. You know no problem sitting there that is really male just discussing. Today everybody is conscious that you really need to have a woman's perspective, a gender perspective on them and somebody at least looking different. I think it's happening the same with ethnicity and race and that's really important to consider it brings in consciousness but consciousness is not the only solution. Consciousness have to lead to different ways of thinking and different matters because the end result is that we would like our organization to be effective and fit for purpose and that's really diversity is key to that unstoppable. Thank you very much. I'll just say a couple of things briefly because I'm anxious to give an opportunity to other participants to speak if they wish. So firstly on the definitions of course the impact of racism goes far beyond UNHCR's persons of mandate concern and our authority to pronounce on this is probably less than that of some other entities but this being said we do want to contribute to thinking about ways in which this could be clarified and we could move towards a shared, better shared understanding in the guide itself you'll see that we've included that in the definitions we've sort to put out there and the term that has been used there refers to other key principles and instruments and aims to give our colleagues something concrete they can work with in their discussions with governments potentially in development of policies or contribution to development of policies and strategies so that the work can go on without being hampered or prevented by semantic discussions. So I think it's very welcome idea that this could be looked at further in the context of the committee or elsewhere and we'd be very glad as HCR I think to contribute to advancing the thinking on that. In regards to organisational culture the second question I think it's extremely important not only for the effectiveness of our work in tackling the phenomenon of racism, xenophobia and intolerance but also our very credibility and legitimacy in purporting to be a protection agency with mandate to promote rights. It's increasingly recognised I think that doing this within the institutions is imperative and will be a process that will benefit every aspect of our work. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy and I think Mono you've articulated very clearly there the challenges around it. Yes we need to become better at recognising our unconscious biases and that's going to involve some tough conversations. It's going to involve some tough measures and it's going to mean that we will need to change things in ways that won't be easy but we can't shirk away from that in order to be able to live up to our mandates and be able better to serve our persons of concern. Finally with regards to Anna, Sophia's question on good practice in the medical centre I think that right now in the context of COVID we're really seeing some promising practices there rolled out every day. If there's a few good things that have come out of the pandemic hopefully this may be one of them. OHCR, OHCHR and others have publicly welcomed measures taken by some governments to allow migrants and refugees to participate in the health sector and we have seen instances where this seems to be really making a positive change to some attitudes and perceptions by showcasing the vitally important contribution that newcomers can make in a much needed sector. So we want to document all of that in the same way that the guide when it was published seeks to embrace a number of key good practices that have been collected over the years. This is going to be another area. We need to be able to continue to look for these and to identify them and publish them in order to bring life to our messages and our calls and to show really that it's in the interests of states and of communities worldwide to overcome prejudices and discrimination and to enable everybody to contribute to the maximum of their potential for the benefit of all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all panellists for your comprehensive responses and I am aware of the time we are coming to the end of our webinar unfortunately because this topic would deserve definitely a series of such webinars and maybe this is something we can look into in the future and I would like to thank all of you and before we conclude with this event I would turn again to Madeline please if you could bring us to the conclusion of this webinar. Thank you. Thank you Valerie and let me also add my thanks not only to our very distinguished panellists but also to everybody who has taken part today and for the thoughtful contributions in the chat as well as to the development of the guide itself. We appreciate very sincerely the very positive words that have been said about the guide today and let me also pay tribute to everybody who was instrumental in its drafting including Valerie Peter and Yvonne Truskin who was a key drafter of this product but of course we're not here today just to congratulate ourselves on the issuance of a guide which at the end of the day is a piece of paper. What we really want to do now is to take the words, the goals the principles and the practices that we have identified there and turn them into action turn them into initiatives that can make a difference in the lives of people on the ground and specifically the way in which we want to do that is to put ideas in the heads and tools in the hands of our colleagues in UNACR offices around the world but also those of them any crucial partners that we work with. We've touched on issues today that go beyond international refugee protection and protection issues around IDPs and stateless people and so this I think really demonstrates how this has to be a collaborative effort. We need to draw on all of that expertise and all of that energy that our partners can bring and help and call upon them to keep informing us to criticize our efforts where they see areas we can strengthen them and try to continually update our knowledge and thinking in this area. So really let me just thank everybody today for bringing us together in this way I have learned a phenomenal about Mount Myself. I can see that in many ways I work here it's just beginning but I see also enormous potential for follow-up discussions at regional and national level and let me just say that from UNHCR's side to our partners on the line but also to colleagues in the field from UNHCR from BIP that we're ready there to throw our energy into doing this and to support you as best we can in tackling racism xenophobia and intolerance. Thank you so much. Best of luck to everybody and have an excellent day. Thank you so much everybody have a good rest of the day. Bye. Thank you Thank you so much. Bye