- The importance of adopting and implementing legislation prohibiting and punishing incitement to hatred and incitement to violence. How the rule of law and democracy frameworks provide a conducive space for the promotion and protection of the rights of minorities. The relevance of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect to issues pertaining minorities and their protection from violence and atrocity crimes. The need to further clarify and establish clear rules regarding the application of the 3rd pillar of the Responsibility to Protect principle (i.e. the possibility of a collective intervention when a State is manifestly failing to protect its population from atrocity crimes). Item III. Understanding the root causes of violence and atrocity crimes This session considered the situations, environments, processes and factors leading to violence and atrocity crimes, including deficits in good governance, rule of law and/or in the respect for human rights. Participants discussed what factors and rights violations, such as exclusion, discrimination and inequality make minorities vulnerable. The session discussed further how patterns of discrimination against a particular minority in the political, social, economic and cultural spheres can translate into abuse and systematic violation of basic human rights, can escalate into violence and ultimately atrocity crimes Former Director of the Human Rights Council and Special Procedures Division at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary of Arbitrary Executions, Mr. Bacre Ndiaye Mr. Ndiaye began by recalling that often the immediate causes of atrocity crimes are exclusion, poverty, systematic violation of human rights, reinterpretation of history and the misleading conception of ethnic superiority. He recalled that building the rule of law, the independence of justice, and saving media from hatred are tools to guarantee that minorities enjoy the same rights as anyone else. He drew attention to the fact that there is always the need to free someone from something, for example from fear, but above all from ignorance. He stressed the need to draw experience from history in order to ensure to future generations a future without prejudice, and mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as possible tools contributing to the prevention of atrocity crimes. He affirmed that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide does not have a committee of experts to monitor the implementation of its provisions and called for the establishment of such a committee for this convention. He analysed how the UPR has allowed the Human Rights Council to review the situation (progress and lack of) in the area of minorities in all Member States and to what extent the UN system, especially through the Human Rights Up Front Initiative, is in a good position to ensure that recommendations arising form monitoring mechanisms are implemented in the countries 8