individuals from minority communities are over-represented as perpetrators of crime, and greatly under-represented in the bodies that oversee the criminal justice system. As a consequence, even with the best will in the world, many minorities regard criminal justice systems with fear: as outside their existence, but within their experience. In turn criminal justice systems and people working within them, often view minorities as posing a series of problems that need to be addressed. 6. At a time of heightened security concerns, this state of affairs is dangerous for a number of reasons. First, it institutionalizes social exclusion, heightening fear and suspicion, generating deep structural schisms in the body politic. Such schisms can then be easily be exploited by those who seek to undermine State security and the enjoyment of human rights by all. Second, in this climate of fear and suspicion there is a real prospect that minorities will be viewed by the security apparatus as a threat, raising the specter of collective punishment against vulnerable groups. Such collective punishments would, in turn, silence moderate voices within societal debates, favouring more strident ones. 7. In such security environs, it is important to acknowledge that fear begets increased fear, with suspicion acting as oxygen to fan such flames. We need to come together to adopt the strong view that terrorism has no religion and no country. It relies instead on an ideology of fear, and its adherents perpetrate violence to cover their inherent cowardice in seeking systemic change for the many injustices that exist. Mahatma Gandhi once warned us about dangers of retaliation: how an eye for an eye would only make the whole world blind. We see such blindness in our lifetime, often accompanied by a collective strategic myopia in designing fairer more inclusive societies. 8. At times like this the easiest response for insecurity is to blame the Other. To hold a mirror to the Other, accuse them of being terrorists, accuse them of being criminals. Yet the scourge that we are dealing with is an internal one, arising from within our community: the human community undivided by our ethnic, religious and linguistics differences. Terrorists over time have come in various disguises: it is the act that needs elimination, irrespective of the identity it hides itself in. 9. I trust that these two days will enable us to hear about creative ways in which criminal justice system can, and are being reformed, to make then better serve the interests of creating ordered, more inclusive, and fairer societies. I particularly welcome the opportunity to understand the extent to which these systems can become truly representative of the populations they seeks to operate within. We must commit to leaving here in two days with a set of concrete recommendations fully cognizant of where the problems lie, that are pragmatic enough to generate creative responses, and determined enough to implement these in the