A/HRC/4/9 page 11 39. Conventional poverty analysis often misses these trends for minorities because the focus is on individual or household levels rather than groups and on material measurements of poverty rather than the social dimensions. While the spatial dimensions of poverty across the urban and rural divide gain attention, the analysis rarely goes deeper to connect spatial and social dimensions and ask “who is poor, where, and why?”. These measurements of vertical inequalities are important but they do not give an adequate picture of the dynamics of poverty across groups. 40. Mainstreaming of collection of data on gender has been important to uncovering the systematic exclusion of women in access to development and political participation, including how this may be different in urban and rural lives. This trend has been responded to through targeted programmes for women, adoption of gender-based analyses, introduction of gender advisors and even an MDG aimed at overcoming gender inequality (Goal 3). The changes in development that have resulted - albeit slowly and inconsistently - demonstrate that looking at development from a “group” perspective can improve outcome possibilities for specific targeted groups. 41. Mainstream development research and policy15 has to date also given more attention to other categories of excluded groups16 (e.g., children, older persons, persons with disabilities). Indigenous peoples have also gained attention to their issues in development, as evidenced in part by the fact that several international development agencies have policies on indigenous peoples; dialogues on development between the United Nations agencies and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues have also been helping to establish good practice. 42. Attention to national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities is significantly weaker. Poverty research using the horizontal inequality17 (which examine measurements of political, social, economic and income inequalities along identity lines) and social exclusion perspectives, finds that inequality between ethnic, religious or linguistic social groups is common. The Minorities at Risk Project,18 which collects various indicators on the political, social and 15 Laure-Helene Piron and Zaza Curran, Public Policy Responses to Exclusion: Evidence from Brazil, South Africa and India, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2005, p. 1. 16 Minority Rights Group International, An examination of approaches by international development agencies to minority issues in development (E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.5/2004/WP.5). 17 Frances Stewart, Horizontal Inequalities: A Neglected Dimension of Development. Working Paper 1, Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) (Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, 2001). 18 See http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/.