• • • • • In addition to Government and law enforcement official receiving training on non-discrimination and women’s rights specified in recommendation 24, the recommendation should include ensuring sanctions against those officials who discriminate against minority women. The recommendations to United Nations agencies need to be strengthened. As per last year’s recommendations, a voluntary fund for minorities should be created to enable minority representatives, including 50 % minority women to participate in the human rights mechanisms of the United Nations system. It is important that everyone ensure that gender and attention to issues of minority women are not sidelined or reduced in the current difficult economic situation and a recommendation should be added in this regard. Recommendations dealing with human trafficking should be amended to explicitly address concrete steps regarding refugee trafficking, encouraging states to work together to create bilateral or regional bodies whose sole purpose would be to combat the slave trade and protect the minority women caught within it and make sure that minority women are actively recruited to work in these bodies. Item IX. Concluding remarks In her closing remarks, the Chair, Ms. Graciela Dixon, mentioned that time constraint was an issue and the Forum would have liked to be able to hear from more participants. However, she highlighted that the Forum was open to receive all additional comments from participants by writing and that they would indeed feed into the outcome document. 27