9th Forum on Minority Issues Protecting minority rights to prevent or mitigate the impact of humanitarian crisis 24 November 2016 Distinguished Vice-President, Excellencies, Colleagues and Friends, It is a pleasure to welcome you to the UN Forum on Minority Issues. Each year, the Forum brings together hundreds of representatives of minority communities, civil society organisations, Member States, agencies and other bodies and programmes of the UN, intergovernmental and regional organisations, national human rights institutions and experts to focus on upholding the rights of minorities. Your focus on humanitarian issues is extremely timely. This is a period of dramatic volatility. Current levels of humanitarian needs are the highest since the Second World War. As 2016 draws to a close there is little indication that the scale and intensity of most of these humanitarian emergencies are diminishing. To the contrary — violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law are escalating in many conflicts and spreading to more. Hospitals are bombed, entire towns are beseiged, people are deliberately starved or driven from their homes.