minority political actors and special guests, delegates from over 45 States as well as representatives of some 95 NGOs 1 . A background document on “Minorities and Effective Political Participation” and a set of draft recommendations had been made available to all Forum participants, and formed the basis for the discussions 2 . Format of the Forum To help focus the discussions during the two days of the Forum and ensure that they would be highly inter-active, each agenda item started with presentations made by minority actors or specialists before the Forum would hear interventions from participants, based on a sign-up sheet. Forum Reports The present document is prepared in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 6/15 which requests the Chairperson to prepare “a summary of the discussion of the Forum, to be made available to all participants of the Forum”. This summary is to be complemented by the report of the Independent expert on minority issues on the recommendations by the Forum, which shall be presented to the Human Rights Council at its 13th Regular Session in March 2010. This summary does not provide the details of all presentations that were made during the Forum’s proceedings. The consolidated list of speakers, and where available the full text of their presentations, can be found on the Forum’s website at the following address: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/minority/forum.htm Item I—Introduction 3 The President of the Human Rights Council, H.E. Ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen, gave the opening statement in which he first recalled that the inaugural session of the Forum on “Minorities and the Right to Education”, held on 15 and 16 December 2008, was a great success both in terms of participation and outcome, had benefitted from the participation of over 370 individuals and produced a series of comprehensive yet concrete recommendations presented by the Independent expert to the Human Rights Council at its 10th session in March 2009. Emphasizing that the views of experts and participants from minority communities are given particular prominence at this Forum and that the organisers had made great efforts 1 The list of participants is available on the website of the Forum on Minority Issues: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/minority/forum.htm 2 See A/HRC/FMI/2009/3 and A/HRC/FMI/2009/4 available on the website. 3 The full text of the opening statements is available on the Forum’s website: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/minority/oral_statements_forum_minority_2009.htm 2