A/HRC/49/46 the latter publication was that the root causes of most of today’s violent conflicts are usually intimately linked to breaches of the human rights of minority communities. This seems to confirm a growing trend, identified in the present report, of too little attention given from international, national and other actors to the minority contexts and grievances, and the denial of their human rights, which are among the top early warning signs of impending violence. 22. Among the main observations made in the present report are that: (a) Globally, conflicts are increasingly intra-State and most involve minorities with grievances of exclusion and discrimination; (b) Whereas the Independent Expert described a strategy to prevent conflicts involving minorities as essential, not only is there no such United Nations strategy, most United Nations and regional initiatives make no specific reference to minorities or respect for their rights as a priority approach in conflict prevention; (c) International and other actors have in recent years increasingly entered into a “denial phase” or perhaps even an anti-minority bias, refusing to admit that communities in conflict situations often constitute minorities; (d) While lip service to prevention is paid, most initiatives and strategies tend to focus on post-conflict situations and processes. More than a decade after the 2010 report by the Independent Expert, the overall assessment is therefore one of neglect and failure: the world has become more violent and conflictridden, with the United Nations and other global and regional institutions unable or unwilling to accept the warnings already made in 2010 as to the steps necessary to address the root causes of most contemporary conflicts, namely addressing these root causes by tackling the grievances of exclusion and discrimination of minorities and the protection of their human rights. 23. Indeed, the extent to which the minority dimension has been expunged from various United Nations initiatives during the past two decades is striking, despite some efforts urging the Organization to incorporate it more explicitly.10 In response to the recommendation in the report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that distant or imminent threats should be detected in a timely fashion and proportional measures should be taken to prevent violence and conflicts,11 the African Union, in the Ezulwini Consensus, proposed the institutionalization of normative frameworks for conflict analysis tools and conflict prevention mechanisms. While one of these frameworks should be for minority rights, the African Union, in the Consensus, went one step further and specifically recommended that United Nations “Member States … undertake to negotiate an international instrument on this subject”.12 B. Evolution of conflicts 24. In the Independent Expert’s 2010 report on conflict prevention and minorities, there was already overwhelming evidence that the exclusion and discrimination (or “group inequality”) experienced by minorities was one of the main causes of conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s. The Independent Expert stated that the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict had concluded that, time and again in the twentieth century, attempts at the suppression of ethnic, cultural or religious differences had led to bloodshed, and in case after case, the accommodation of diversity within appropriate constitutional forms had helped to prevent bloodshed. The Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had conducted research showing that the likelihood of conflict increased with rising group inequality. The report of the High-level Panel on Threats, 10 11 12 See, for example, “The Common African position on the proposed reform of the United Nations: the Ezulwini Consensus”, issued by the African Union. See A/59/565. African Union, “The Common African position on the proposed reform of the United Nations”, sect. A (ii), p. 3. 5