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Requirements, including language qualifications for public service jobs, should
not result in the effective exclusion of minorities.
96. States should monitor economic development projects to assess their
impact on minorities, to ensure that they benefit equally with others, and that
there is no detrimental effect on their rights.
97. Where there are historical patterns of exclusion of members of minorities
from employment, business and education opportunities, States should
implement capacity-building programmes and other affirmative action
measures to enable members of minorities, including minority women, to
compete on an equal footing.
98. States should collect disaggregated data concerning the access of all
sectors of society to economic opportunities and political decision-making. Data
should be disaggregated by ethnicity and gender to highlight patterns of
inequality that have an impact on minority women in different ways than on
minority men. Data collection programmes should be designed with the
involvement of representatives of minority communities, should allow for
diverse forms of self-identification and should provide effective guarantees of
data protection.
99. Public proclamations regarding national identity, for example in the
constitution, and key national symbols should be fully inclusive, and should not
exclude segments of a country’s population nor deny, explicitly or implicitly,
the full diversity of the population.
100. Education curricula should avoid stereotypes and provide a realistic and
non-discriminatory image of all communities within society. States should
ensure that members of minorities are able to adopt the necessary measures to
ensure the protection and promotion of their identity, such as providing mother
tongue education and religious education. Education at all levels should have
the goal of enabling members of minorities to compete on an equal footing for
jobs and other opportunities while preserving their distinct identities.
101. States should involve members of all minority groups in conflict
prevention and peacebuilding initiatives.
102. National human rights institutions should have mandates that explicitly
include the protection and promotion of minority rights and expertise in the
field of minority rights. Consideration should be given to establishing dedicated
consultative and advisory bodies to help ensure that minority issues are
adequately addressed at the national and local levels.
Recommendations for the international level
103. Minority rights expertise should be strengthened and integrated
comprehensively across the United Nations system. Given the prevalence of
conflicts involving identity issues, permanent in-house expertise on minority
issues within the principal agencies and departments working on conflict
prevention would be highly beneficial.
104. United Nations staff working on conflict prevention and peacebuilding,
particularly those working on policy, analysis and early warning and in country
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