Check against delivery intersection of various grounds of discrimination will be a cross-cutting perspective in all the work carried out and particular attention will be given to specific groups of women, including women belonging to minorities. Let me now turn to the item on which I have been invited to speak, “minority women and effective political participation” where my focus is going to be on conditions necessary to guarantee the effective political participation of minority women, obstacles, concrete steps and existing measures aimed at increasing their political participation. I would first like to emphasize that the political empowerment of women in general, but of women belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities in particular, is crucial to arrive at inclusive societies and genuine sustainable democracies. It is a fact that women constitute slightly more than half of the world population and their contribution to the social and economic development of societies is also more than half as compared to that of men by virtue of their dual roles in the productive and reproductive spheres. Yet their participation in formal political structures and processes, where decisions regarding the use of societal resources generated by both men and women are made, remains rather insignificant. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union latest figures available, the global average of women in national parliaments in 2011 is slightly more than 19%. It was 15% in 2005, hence an increase of only 4% over 6 years. Those figures are still far away from the commitment of the international community to gender equality and to bridging the gender gap in the formal political arena, reinforced by the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform of Action. CEDAW’s Article 7 sets out women's right to vote, to stand for election, to be involved in formulating public policy and to actively participate in non-government organisations (NGOs) and other bodies concerned with the public and political life of the country on an equal footing with men. The Beijing Platform of Action, adopted in 1995, recognizes that without the active participation of women and the incorporation of women's perspective at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved. More recently, the CEDAW Committee, through its General Recommendation No. 28 on the core obligations of States under article 2, called upon States to legally recognize intersecting forms of discrimination and their compounded negative impact on the women concerned and prohibit them. When it comes to political representation of minority women, data have shown that minority women are underrepresented to a greater degree than both their male minority and majority female counterparts. The marginalization/discrimination that minority women suffer because they are members of a minority group is often exacerbated by the sex-based discrimination they face within the dominant group and the minority group they belong to. The difficulty resides in embracing minority women issues from both perspectives at the same time in order to have an inclusive approach which integrates gender equality and women’s rights as well as minority rights. In order to do so, one needs to have a clear understanding first of the different types of discrimination that both groups face separately and secondly, how those different discrimination practices interplay and impact on the enjoyment of and the possibility of claiming their rights. 2