Discussion During the discussion under item IV, the following points were raised by the participants: - the lack of available data reflecting the number of acts of police violence perpetrated against members of minority communities in certain countries; - the challenge of conducting investigations and ensuring accountability for violations against minorities in the context of an ethnic conflict; - the language barrier, which sometimes prevents certain minorities from effectively using courts; - the long term intergenerational impact generated by the disproportionate prosecution and detention of members of minorities, and the particular importance for judicial authorities to uphold the best interests of the child in their decisions; - the need for implementation of existing protection frameworks for minorities, and the importance of using a human rights-based approach to ensure effective participation of minorities in all aspects of the criminal justice system; - the particular attention needed to tackle intersectional discrimination faced by minority women in situation of detention; - examples of good national practice in relation to culturally sensitive correctional measures. Item V. Addressing the root causes of discrimination in the administration of justice The session identified actual and potential barriers to countering discrimination against minorities in the criminal justice system, including effective strategies to address obstacles preventing the collection and analysis of comprehensive and disaggregated data at each stage of the criminal process. The session identified measures to remove actual or potential obstacles for minorities joining relevant professions including the police, the judiciary, prosecution services, the legal profession and prison personnel, and shared positive examples of systems in place to guarantee independent oversight and accountability mechanisms for upholding the independence and integrity of the police and the judiciary. The session discussed concrete examples of how to ensure that relevant training initiatives are designed and implemented with the meaningful participation of and in consultation with minority groups. M. Mutuma Ruteree, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, raised the importance of addressing root causes of discrimination in order to improve efforts to eliminate discrimination in law enforcement and criminal justice processes. Mr Ruteree devoted his more recent report to the General Assembly to the issue of stop and search practices, which have disproportionately targeted minority populations. He warned against the use of new technologies that purport to create automatically generated “risk profiles” for specific ethnic groups, which he argued could become a regularized and permanent fixture of immigration and border control management systems around the world. The legal framework to prevent discrimination needed to be comprehensive, with adequate data concerning stopped individuals collected on the basis of self-identification and 9