that we must delve deeper inside those communities and their problems. In doing so, we reveal hidden challenges and those issues that are frequently overlooked or neglected. Age, disability, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity can often serve to compound the discrimination that minorities already face. For minority women, for example, the effects of marginalisation in economic participation can be particularly powerful. The challenges of double or multiple-discrimination, due to their status as minorities and as women serves to reduce the opportunities available to women to benefit from their participation in economic life. Double and triple burdens of work compound the lack of basic amenities such as clean water and sanitation, cheap and clean cooking fuels, availability of child care support, and protection against domestic, work-place and societal violence. They render the conditions under which women, and all too often young girls, work and earn incomes difficult, if not harmful or even dangerous. The growing informalisation of labour markets consequent on globalization has brought more women into paid work, but often with low pay and under poor working conditions. Equally, entrenched gender roles and status leave women and girls highly vulnerable, for example, with regard to ownership of land or property or inheritance rights, the ability to access post-primary education, credit, technology or markets. Colleagues and friends, In drawing attention to key issues in the next two days, let us not forget the elephants in the room. The global financial and economic crisis that we are presently living through has had massive impacts not only at the heights of global governance but in the lives of people, especially those such as minorities who are already in the most difficult economic situations. Similar