A/HRC/31/74 committed to the fight against racism, discrimination and related intolerance and, in what is now the eighth year of the Committee, reaffirmed the need for the elaboration of complementary standards to strengthen and update the international legal framework, to deal with the new expressions of racial discrimination and related intolerance and protect victims. The delegation regretted the lack of support of some countries in this crucial mandate over the years and reiterated its call to Member States to undertake the effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. It valued the important interaction with members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in identifying gaps and other relevant issues under the Convention. 13. The representative of South Africa aligned herself with the statement delivered by Algeria on behalf of the African Group. She stated that the dialogue that the Ad Hoc Committee had had since its inception had provided it with ample opportunity to reflect on the substantive and procedural gaps to the Convention that the requisite instrument or instruments was or were supposed to address. The representative recalled the various key thematic issues that the African Group and South Africa had identified over the years as contemporary manifestations of racism, including xenophobia, Islamophobia, antiSemitism, propagation of racist and xenophobic attacks through cyberspace (cybercrime), racial profiling and incitement to racial, ethnic and religious hatred. The victims of profiling in those areas required better protection, maximum remedies and total elimination of impunity for the perpetration of these acts of racism. The victims of those crimes did not require the Committee to hold academic debates on whether complementary standards were necessary or not. It was therefore of the view that such a debate would be moot and unhelpful. It considered that all that was required was to implement paragraph 199 of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, in which the World Conference instructed the Commission in 2001 to elaborate complementary standards. South Africa maintained that any attempt to negate that instruction was indeed an attempt to renegotiate that outcome document. The Committee could not afford to avoid its responsibility to protect victims of racism and racial discrimination, as doing so would be tantamount to emasculating the plight of the victims of those scourges. It reiterated its call to end the rhetoric about combating racism and, in that regard embark on concrete actions to eradicate those social evils, and looked forward to constructive and meaningful discussions to address the very important subject matter before the Committee. 14. The representative of the European Union stated that all forms of manifestations of racism and xenophobia were incompatible with the founding values of the European Union, which are those of the respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and respect for human rights. It remained firmly committed to combating those phenomena both within the European Union and throughout the world. The representative recalled the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, to which all European Union members States are parties, stating that the Convention was the bedrock for the worldwide fight against racial discrimination. The representative stated that the European Union remained fully committed to the primary objectives and commitments undertaken at the World Conference against Racism, and to engaging with the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, the Ad Hoc Committee and the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. However, it raised the question of whether six weeks of working group meetings per year were the most effectively way of spending resources in the fight against racism. As to the current session of the Ad Hoc Committee, it noted that the five informal consultations with regional and political coordinators during the intersessional period lacked participation and contribution from many groups. The European Union hoped that the Committee would remain seized of the topics as defined in the programme of work, and that all could engage in discussions constructively. To that effect, the European Union was 5