Final UN Forum on Minority Issues, “Minorities and Cohesive Societies: Equality, Social Inclusion, and Socioeconomic Participation” 30 November – 1 December 2023, Geneva (Switzerland) PANEL: Legal and Structural Approaches to More Inclusive Societies STATEMENT Slava Balan, PhD candidate and part-time professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law Your Excellencies, Dear Forum Participants, The world is experiencing turbulent times and minorities around the world are feeling this more than many others. Despite strong efforts of some actors, minorities are still among the most marginalized and “invisible” groups in the world. The annual reports of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, the outcomes of UPR and treaty body reviews demonstrate that minorities are rarely mentioned or accounted for in public documents nationally and internationally. My short statement today aims to point out several avenues for making minority rights work more impactful and transformative. (1) My professional experience and academic research indicate that in most parts of the world the work on minorities is carried out in a sectoral or “niched” way. For example, in many countries the minority issues are dealt with by specialized departments and agencies, often focusing on artistic and folkloric or sometimes conflict prevention mandates. At the same time, there is often insufficient understanding that the minority dimension is omnipresent and that the socioeconomic empowerment of minorities is, probably, the most necessary prerequisite for conflict prevention. Specialized minority institutions and policies are important at the first stage, particularly for raising awareness about the most outstanding minority issues. But without the next step – mainstreaming – minority work risks to stall and get stuck in its reserved “silo”. Minority mainstreaming firstly concerns well-established frameworks. E.g. a recent overview by Sébastien Lorion from the Danish Institute for Human Rights indicates that since 1993 more than 150 National Human Rights Action Plans (NHRAPs) have been adopted by almost 80 countries of the world, and with many such plans in preparation. But was the minority dimension fully incorporated and mainstreamed in all these Plans? Remarkably, minorities are largely omitted in the UN-level 2030 SDGs documents – after having been entirely ignored in the previous MDGs. At the same time, since SDGs are chiefly a nationally1|Page