A/HRC/15/45 parties, movements and groups have proven their ability to influence or restrict the political debate around issues relating to their agenda often based on a racist or xenophobic ideology. By presenting simplistic and populist ideas to solve complex problems affecting a significant part of the population (relating for instance to unemployment, insecurity or immigration), these parties, movements and groups manage to gain electoral support. In doing so, they compel traditional political parties to react and focus on these sensitive issues, which may in turn foster racist, xenophobic or intolerant attitudes within society if dealt with inadequately, and thus have a negative impact on progressive policies designed to protect the rights of the vulnerable groups. 19. Democratic societies have developed various strategies to counter extremist political parties, movements and groups. Indeed, the Special Rapporteur would like to express his appreciation to the political parties that have decided not to associate themselves with extremist political parties. He notes that, in some cases, however, traditional political parties have accepted to build coalitions with extremist political parties, thereby providing them with political legitimacy and access to the conduct of public affairs, where they may then implement their discriminatory agenda. 20. The Special Rapporteur also welcomes cases where an independent and impartial judiciary has decided that, owing to their illegal activities, extremist political parties, movements and groups have had their financing blocked, or, as a last resort, has been dissolved. The Special Rapporteur would nonetheless like to draw attention to the capacity of dissolved extremist political parties, movements and groups to return under other names and status, and therefore continue to propagate their agenda based on hatred. 21. The Special Rapporteur therefore would like to emphasize that it is essential for political parties to base their programmes and activities on respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms, democracy and the rule of law. In this regard, he would like to emphasize the role that, political leaders could and should play in the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. In particular, he highlights the fact that, because of the audience that they reach and the moral authority that they carry, it is all the more important for political leaders to condemn and counter all political messages fuelling racism and xenophobia. III. Conclusions and recommendations 22. Extremist political parties, movements and groups, including neo-Nazis and skinhead groups, and similar extremist ideological movements, pose a major challenge to a number of fundamental human rights and freedoms, but also, more generally, to democracy itself. The Special Rapporteur takes the view, that even if these parties, movements and groups take different shapes, no region of the world is immune to the phenomenon. While the best responses should be country-specific and therefore take into account the political, historic, economic and sociocultural context of each State, the Special Rapporteur would like to make the general recommendations outlined below. 23. The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to be more vigilant vis-à-vis extremist political parties, movements and groups which promote, either explicitly or implicitly, the dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination and xenophobia, as well as acts of violence or incitement to such acts against specific groups of individuals. He emphasizes that a higher degree of vigilance might involve the adoption or more robust enforcement of legislative measures, as well as a wide-range of other complementary measures. GE.10-15022 7