2 I did however want to emphasise a few of the main points which permeates much of the contributions of experts, minority and civil society organisations, human rights defenders and other stakeholders: - First, that the international community and United Nations institutions are not sufficiently focussing where it is most needed to recognise and address the main factors leading to conflicts in order to develop effective mechanisms and tools that privilege early warning and conflict prevention. It was mentioned many times but needs to be emphasized: the world is failing to prevent conflicts with the number of conflicts, mostly internal conflicts within a state, has close to tripled in recent years. Most of these conflicts involve minorities who have grievances of exclusion, discrimination, even violence and atrocities. The point that was made often in different ways is that the UN and other players dealing with conflicts should be focussing most of their attention on the risk factors and early warning signs of conflicts that could emerge involving minorities. Instead, the UN and many others are ignoring, and in a sense in a form of denial that minorities and indigenous peoples are involved. If you listened closely, it was surprising, even disturbing, to hear some speakers avoid using the word minority when dealing with various conflict situation, using instead sometimes the word community, group, or some other word along those lines. Let me be blunt about why this is a dangerous omission or neglect: minorities have human rights in international law – groups or communities do not, and not referring to minorities in conflict situations is to deny the human rights dimensions of exclusion, discrimination and other factors that are more likely at the center of the context where most conflicts occur and spiral into violence and atrocities. - Another issue that came up is the urgent need to mainstream the human rights dimension, specifically those of marginalised minorities and the sections within these minorities who are particularly vulnerable to abuse such as the intersection of the rights of women and disabled within these minority communities. Let me again be clear that the human rights of minorities are not