race, ethnicity, and, in the result, burdensome nationality requirements and birth registration problems. He further emphasized that in the consequence, statelessness deprives minorities of their human rights and freedoms, including right to access nationality documents, right to vote, right to housing and property, freedom of movement, and other human rights. He described the issue of statelessness affecting Tamil community in Sri Lanka. P.P. Sivapragasam emphasized the important role the international community, political entities and civil society can play to resolve the issue of statelessness affecting minorities. He suggested to encourage states to set up national minority rights commissions in their respective countries and enact or reform laws to ensure citizenship rights of minority communities are protected. He further stressed the need to eliminate discriminatory practices against minorities, also in relation to the enjoyment of civil and political, economic, social and cultural rights; to declare Global Program of Action on Right to Development of Minority Groups. He also emphasized the importance of ensuring the protection of women’s and children’s rights in ensuring the promotion and protection of the rights of the minorities, He also suggested to have a global study on citizenship rights of minorities and statelessness. He emphasized the importance of promoting and enhancing international human rights mechanisms available to address issues concerning minorities. Discussion The following issues were raised during the discussion under Item III: - The importance of understanding the issue of statelessness as both cause and consequence of conflicts and forced population movements. - The ways to prevent statelessness through promotion and protection of the rights of persons belonging to minorities and prevention of conflicts. - The aggravated impact of the effect of uprooting of minorities from the place where they were born caused by conflict, forced displacement and migration - The impact of irregular migration especially on children whose parents do not have documentation. - The need for identifying and protecting stateless persons who are in a migratory context through the establishment of a statelessness determination procedure that allows stateless persons to access basic rights Item IV. Ensuring the right to a nationality for persons belonging to minorities through facilitation of birth registration, naturalization and citizenship for stateless minorities Participants addressed the challenges faced by persons belonging to minorities, including nomadic and other non-traditional minorities and minorities for the elimination of laws and practices that arbitrarily deny or deprive persons of their nationality on the basis of discriminatory grounds such as race, ethnicity, religion and language. Participants shared views on ways to ensure access to the documentation needed to prove nationality or entitlement to nationality for all, without discrimination, which, inter alia, include facilitation of birth registration, naturalization, confirmation and acquisition of citizenship. 8