Opening Speech of the Chairperson of the Forum on Minority Issues I have the honour to chair the proceedings of this seventh UN Forum on Minority Issues and extend a warm welcome to participants. We look forward to the proceedings over the next two days and trust that they will unfold in a respectful, courteous, and constructive atmosphere to enable the Forum to carry out its work. All participants should ensure that a sense of respect and tolerance permeates the discussion. As a poet of Ancient Rome poet said, ‘once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled’. The proceedings in the Forum should stand as a symbol of how its goals are to be achieved: on the basis of exchange of information, analysis, dialogue, a platform for action, a progressive ethos. Its essence is the opportunity to engage the widest range of participants capable of making constructive contributions to the important issues at hand. The thematic of this seventh Forum could hardly be more serious or topical: violence and atrocity crimes against minorities. All of us will have particular instances in our minds. We shall be reminded of many harsh cases during our proceedings. We aspire to conclude the Forum better informed and able to understand what must be done within the parameters of possibility. Minorities have been exposed to many forms of oppression over the centuries, and questions regarding their treatment have been a constant of international law. In the better times, this concern generated specific agreements on the protection of groups in particular situations, producing a patchwork of regulation that left many groups vulnerable and unprotected. The League of Nations attempted to be more systematic, developing a procedural and institutional model that was not as such followed up in the era of the United Nations. The case for specific protection of minorities did not commend itself to the majority of those who drafted the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This did not necessarily mean that minorities were neglected. Their concerns were subsumed under the project of universal, undifferentiated rights that replaced the League’s concern with the protection of specific groups. The General Assembly was nonetheless motivated to declare, in a resolution passed on the same day as the UDHR, that ‘the United Nations ‘cannot remain indifferent to the fate of minorities’. It did not ‘remain indifferent’ if indeed it was ever so. The universal human right framework is a defining feature of our age and minority rights continue to function within it. Within the larger human rights framework, the need for a specific focus on minorities was not forgotten. The setting up of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities was evidence that the issue remained alive, as did the emergence of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, followed by the inclusion of Article 27 on the rights of persons belonging to