morning in truly welcoming your participation in this Forum as experts who know the challenges better than any one else. Too often those whom such meetings as this exist to benefit find themselves relegated to the sidelines and spoken for or about, rather than able to speak themselves. I congratulate the Human Rights Council for creating a truly participatory and inclusive Forum on Minority Issues. The issues that we will address in the coming intense two days of work – minorities and effective participation in economic life - are ones that I am deeply committed to and which urgently require such dedicated attention. When the conditions exist for fair and effective participation in economic life, the result is just, fair and stable societies in which all may contribute equally and prosper equally. Such societies reap the benefits of their diversity. However, too often such conditions are not in place for some disadvantaged minority communities. The result is frequently poverty, exclusion or marginalization, and social division that damages not just minorities but the whole of society. I would like to emphasize that the issues that we will address, while certainly challenging, are problems that can be resolved and have been resolved effectively in many instances and in many countries. There is indeed much good and positive practice to build upon and lessons that have been learned through long and often difficult experiences – lessons and practices that can and should be transmitted elsewhere. Frequently those solutions do not cost vast amounts of national financial resources and they do not require long and costly programmes of implementation or generations of cultural or social change.