A/78/195 regional forums often highlighted the greater accessibility for individuals and organizations achieved thanks to the regional presence, focus and attention of the forums, including with regard to the experts who contributed to the events. Focused specifically on regional contexts and conditions, the regional forums were much more responsive to and accommodating of the specific challenges experienced in the different regions. It was widely acknowledged that this was something the two -day Forum on Minority Issues held in Geneva could not provide, owing to time, accessibility and resource limitations. The regional recommendations were also more targeted and more appropriate to the challenges faced by minorities in Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe and Central Asia, and provided greater space, voice and visibility to the minorities from each of those regions. 43. In addition, the regional forums allowed for a more inclusive approach, so as to ensure far greater participation by providing for interpretation in or documentary use of minority and regional languages, including Amazigh, Spanish, Portuguese, Guaraní, Malay, sign languages and other languages. 44. Overall, the regional forums allowed for a much higher degree of participation by minority organizations and representatives, as well as, in some cases, State representatives, which otherwise would not have been possible. B. Thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and the high-level General Assembly event 45. For the first time since the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities in 1992, during its seventy-seventh session, held in New York, the General Assembly held a high level event chaired by the President of the General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the instrument on 21 September 2022. 46. While the global environment for many minorities remains grim, the United Nations nevertheless acknowledged the importance of minority issues during the marking of the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration – and admitted failures. 47. The Secretary-General made the following statement: “Thirty years on – the world is falling short. Far short. We are not dealing with gaps – we are dealing with outright inaction and negligence in the protection of minority rights.” In addition, Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, stated that, after 30 years, the commitment laid out in the Declaration remained unfulfilled, and that Member State and multilateral action was urgently needed to raise the priority of minority rights on the global agenda, with the United Nations system itself needing to step up and promise joint action across the entire Organization (A/HRC/52/27, para. 17). 48. For his part, the Special Rapporteur noted that the anniversary event could serve as a turning point to remediate the absence of progress achie ved institutionally at the United Nations in the past decades and to redraw attention and efforts towards advancing the protection and recognition of minorities and their rights, as had occurred more recently with other marginalized groups. 49. The Special Rapporteur hopes that the recognition of the Secretary-General and the greater attention paid to minority issues at the seventy-seventh session of the General Assembly in 2022 will pave the route to redressing the more recent “inaction and negligence” at the United Nations, and that the Organization will finally move forward with a series of initiatives that have been called for, such as a voluntary fund 12/21 23-15818