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linguistically and economically accessible and that special measures are taken, where
necessary, to ensure that marginalized groups and vulnerable persons are able to benefit
from such procedures in an equitable and just manner.
107. Where appropriate, the transfer of land rights to family members should be
facilitated, in particular to allow women surviving a conflict or a disaster to reclaim the
property of their husband or families or to reclaim a property if titles and documents have
been lost during a crisis. Similarly, where land or property title documents have been lost,
legal assistance measures should be made available to assist minorities in making their
claims.
108. States should ensure that minorities recovering from a crisis are able to enjoy their
political rights, in particular their right to vote and to stand for election.
109. States should ensure that minorities recovering from a crisis are able to exercise their
freedom of religion by guaranteeing their access to places of worship.
110. States should plan and carry out appropriate and meaningful consultation with
minorities affected by crises and make available a complaint mechanism for minorities to
seek an effective remedy in situations where they think they may have been discriminated
against at any stage of the delivery of humanitarian assistance or they may not have
received the support or protection to which they are entitled. States should ensure that
minorities do not suffer reprisals for seeking remedy.
111. The United Nations, in collaboration with national human rights institutions and
others, should provide technical assistance in respect of complaint mechanisms that can be
safely accessed by persons belonging to minorities to enable them to voice their concerns
regarding relief and recovering efforts. Organizations or individuals responsible for human
rights violations, including acts of discrimination or neglect, must be held accountable.
Organizations should ensure timely and thorough reporting of their activities to foster
transparency and accountability for their actions. Minority communities and local nongovernmental organizations should engage with accountability and quality standards for
humanitarian assistance in order to better hold humanitarian actors accountable.
112. The United Nations and other international humanitarian and development actors
should carry out a transparent evaluation of their programmes, with the participation of
minority communities, with a view to drawing lessons learned to feed into planning for
future operations.
Building fair and inclusive societies
113. States, the United Nations and other development and humanitarian actors should
engage as early as possible with support programmes specifically designed for minorities in
post-crisis situations and with projects to promote community cohesion.
114. The United Nations should ensure that development and humanitarian partners,
taking account of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants of September 2016,
move rapidly beyond the emergency response phase and ensure that minorities are not
discriminated against and are fully included and consulted in post-crisis development and
redevelopment programmes.
115. Minorities should be fully involved in peacebuilding and transitional justice
processes aimed at creating stability and avoiding future crises. Peace agreements and
justice processes, including truth commissions, criminal prosecutions, reparations for
victims and institutional reforms, must adopt a minority rights-based approach in order to
ensure the rights of minorities and promote coherent and inclusive societies. Minority
rights-based approaches should also be applied to national reconstruction and rehabilitation
efforts after a disaster.
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