Presentation by Ms Michele Klein-Solomon, Director of the Migrants in Crisis Initiative (MICIC), International Migration Organisation (IOM) 9th session of the Forum on Minority Issues - ohchr 24/25 November 2016 Unites Nations - Geneva Thank you very much Mr Chairperson and Madam Special Rapporteur, the Secretariat, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. It is truly a pleasure and an honour to be here with you today; to have an opportunity to address the question of protection of minority rights in the context of humanitarian crises. The Chairperson introduced me recently served as the director of the Secretariat of Migrants in Countries in Crisis Initiative, which was a state led initiative but engaged international organisations, civil society organisations, private sector, to really look at the risks and vulnerabilities that migrants experience when crises occur; and to look at what can be done to reduce vulnerability enhance protection and promote solutions. The reason why this initiative is relevant to our discussion today is that in many respects migrants face similar challenges to ethnic religious and other minorities. And particularly the opportunity to look at three phases of a crisis: pre-crisis preparedness, actual crises response, and post-crises reconstruction and recovery in a way that ensures the inclusion of the risks, the vulnerabilities, the particularities of migrant population. I believe is directly analogous to the session that you are having here today. The reasons that the states and Migrants in Crisis Initiative was led by the governments of the Philippines and the US with a participation of a working group with six other governments, the several international organisations, several civil society organisations in the private sector. Because they saw that at this point that much like across the world that no country is immune to disasters, to natural disaster or conflict, in sum or whole of the country. And at the same time, often migrants or other forms of minority populations are not accounted for in disaster response planning. And while nationals, of course, and majority populations will be affected by crises situations minorities like migrants will experience additional barriers and vulnerabilities, because of their unique characteristics. In the case of migrants, which is also the case for many minority communities, they may face barriers because they may not speak the same language, they may face barriers because of culture and cultural comfort with the authorities and the willingness to come forward and identify themselves in a crises situation. Their legal status may create additional barriers to coming forward for protection in the systems. And as I said most importantly they are often simply not accounted for in disaster risk reduction and response mechanisms and their particular vulnerabilities and needs and barriers to access for protection are the kinds of things that motivated the need for this initiative. Many of you will remember the crisis in Libya 2011, which really shined the worlds attention on the fact that there were large migrant populations during that civil conflict. Nearly two million migrant workers were displaced as a result and because of the conflict they did not have access to normal means of protection including of their own governments from their own consulates. Bur of course crises are not limited to conflict affecting minority and migrants. But natural disasters also and while the vulnerabilities may be of a different character there are some that are quite the same. As a result, we undertook a very broad and inclusive set of consultation. Six regional consultations around the world. Inclusive consultations led by governments but with also the participation of civil society organisations,