women; promoting equal opportunities for decent work and increase investment and continuous strategic development and entrepreneurship programmes for young people of African descent; guarantee sexual and reproductive rights as fundamental human rights, as well as facilitating access to comprehensive, culturally-sensitive health services. Ms. Libérate Nicayenzi gave a presentation on the situation of minority women in Burundi, underlining that they continue to face multiple barriers, including extreme poverty, high level of illiteracy, low level of education and school attendance. She therefore emphasized the need to sensitize women and girls belonging to minorities to the multiple benefits of education and to develop strategies aimed at the reduction of poverty, taking into account the specific needs of minority women. She also emphasized the need to increase their political participation, gave a few examples of national practices aimed at empowering minority women, including free primary education, and concluded with a few recommendations, including calling on African states to ratify the optional protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the rights of women in Africa. Ms. Mucha-Shim Quiling Arquiza, from The Phillipines, gave a presentation on the importance of strengthening education systems as a means to promote community empowerment. She mentioned that since 2005, in the Philippines, concerted efforts of education rights advocates and civil society network working on educational reforms have been supporting Alternative learning system (ALS) and schools for living traditions as strategies in the campaign for Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals. In response, the government has adopted important laws and implemented programmes to institutionalize the ALS. Besides, the Department of Education has since upgraded the ‘Non-Formal Education’ programme and created a Bureau of Alternative Learning System. Ms. Marilin Pasco Gonzalez, from Colombia, gave a presentation on some meaningful experiences and affirmative-action that have been implemented in Colombia with a view to improve the situation of minority women. Those examples included: empowerment of minority women through the strengthening of networks at local, regional and national levels, the use of quotas to guarantee the participation of women into politics, positive measures aimed at enhancing access for minority women to colleges and universities. She however pointed to the need for follow-up on implementation and actual impact of such measures. She highlighted that despite those positive measures, minority women in Colombia still faced discrimination, violence and exclusion so that there was a need for more concerted efforts amongst all stakeholders to address those issues. In this connection, her recommendations included: the need to increase efforts to ensure the full enjoyment of the rights of minority women, in particular those living in rural areas; the need to monitor and review the measures aimed at increasing access to education, especially at higher levels of education for Afro-Colombian women and those living in rural areas; there should be more accountability and monitoring of the allocation of resources for programmes and projects by the national governments as well as local 23