their treatment of minorities. A separate section should therefore be inserted into the recommendations with a view to include the following measures: o The judiciary must be made aware of the crucial role they can play in ensuring that the participation of minorities in public life is not rendered illusory. Training should thus be provided to judges and judicial officers on minority rights, and the special care that must be taken to ensure that when interpreting the constitutionality of laws and administrative practices, the rights of minorities are given due regard o Adequate opportunities should be given to members of minority communities to participate in the judiciary, with judicial appointment commissions established in a manner that ensures that they are reflective of the wider community and that deserving minority candidates for judicial officer are not discriminated against in their appointment, terms of service and promotions o In issues affecting the rights of minorities, care should be taken to ensure that the composition of a judicial panel (where more than a judge is involved) reflects the diversity of the population to ensure that justice is not only done, but seen to be done. Comments on section F. The International Community, including United Nations agencies - Reference should be made with respect to resorting to regional human rights standards and recommendations of the relevant regional mechanisms, as well as to the relevance of national standards and jurisprudence; - Country-specific consultative structures can be very useful mechanism to actually listen and understand minorities’ various concerns and aspirations, and some of UNDP country offices that are very active on minority issues are doing this, perhaps not through institutionalized structures. Their main reason being, if every agency were to set up parallel structures at the country level, then there would be competition over resources, prioritization of issues as well as major challenges in undertaking common UN planning processes, referred to in recommendation 32; - The term “UN Country Teams” should be used instead of “UNDP” in paragraph 34 and “taking into account country situations” should be added after “processes”, in line with paragraph 6. Comments on section G. Media - The recommendations would be further enhanced by a stronger assertion of the fundamental and mutually reinforcing nature of the relationship between freedom of expression and access to information, on the one hand, and the meaningful and informed political participation of minorities, on the other; 24