A/HRC/49/46 series of conflict prevention guidelines that used international and human rights standards, or a “framework for minority rights”, for clarifying and further elaborating the content of the human rights of minorities, namely the Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life, the Oslo Recommendations Regarding the Linguistic Rights of National Minorities and the Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education Rights of National Minorities. 42. Those auspicious beginnings 30 years ago at the regional level, as well as other promising stirrings – such as the African Union proposal in 2005 for States Members of the United Nations to negotiate an international instrument on minority rights to prevent conflicts, the 2010 report of the Independent Expert and the 2018 United Nations/World Bank joint report – in a sense all acknowledged that most contemporary conflicts were rooted in the long-standing denial of human rights obligations, and particularly in the discrimination and exclusion of compact or significant minority group populations, skewed patterns of political participation and representation and the distribution of socioeconomic goods, and the repression or dismissal of the culture, language or religion of these minorities. These initiatives were, however, not emulated at the global level despite the continual official emphasis on conflict prevention. 43. In the same vein, it is important to highlight and illustrate the direct connection between the denial of the human rights of minorities and so many of the world’s growing number of conflicts. This connection is sometimes obstructed behind the more general terms of “exclusion”, “group-based grievances” and “inequalities”. In their joint report, the United Nations and the World Bank assert, for example, that “many of today’s violent conflicts relate to group-based grievances arising from inequality, exclusion, and feelings of injustice” and that “it is when an aggrieved group assigns blame to others or to the state for its perceived economic, political, or social exclusion that its grievances may become politicized and risk tipping into violence”.38 In making that assertion, they are actually pointing the finger at situations that most likely involve legislation, policies or practices that unreasonably or unjustifiably have a negative impact on national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and that therefore presumably risk violating one of the fundamental pillars of the global human rights regime – the right to equality without discrimination in international law. 44. A simple illustration shows the significance of the data and reports mentioned earlier: of the 10 “conflicts to watch” identified by the International Crisis Group in 2020, 6 (in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Yemen, as well as Jammu and Kashmir) involve ethnic, religious or linguistic cleavages. Another report indicated that 14 out of 16 cases of serious armed conflict in 2020 involved groups divided along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines.39 45. All situations of conflict are complex and involve many more factors than simply having one group with long-standing grievances against State authorities. Other factors could include the possibility of the instrumentalization of grievances by outside forces for geopolitical reasons; the raising of false alarms to artificially create tensions and divisions within a State; the irredentist exploitation or exaggeration of popular discontent among a minority population; incitement to violence or even calls to genocide against a despised and dehumanized minority by majoritarian populists; or efforts by some authorities to achieve a “homogenous nation” through forced assimilation, to name but a few. 46. Conflicts such as those in Arminia-Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Cameroon (anglophones), Canada in the 1960s (Quebec), Ethiopia (Oromiya and Tigray States), France (Corsica), Nicaragua (Miskitos), India (Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and so forth), Italy in the 1960s (South Tyrol), Papua New Guinea (Bougainville), Mali (Tuareg rebellions), Nigeria (Niger River Delta), Philippines (Mindanao), Thailand (southern provinces), Ukraine 38 39 United Nations and World Bank, Pathways for Peace, p. 109. The cases involved Afghanistan, Armenia-Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (east), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (east; Allied Democratic Forces), Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, as well as the Lake Chad region and the western Sahel region. See Escola de Cultura de Pau, Alert 2021! Report on Conflicts, Human Rights and Peacebuilding (Barcelona, Spain, Icaria, 2021). 11