9th Forum on Minority Issues Protecting minority rights to prevent or mitigate the impact of humanitarian crisis 24 November 2016 Distinguished Vice-President, Excellencies, Colleagues and Friends, It is a pleasure to welcome you to the UN Forum on Minority Issues. Each year, the Forum brings together hundreds of representatives of minority communities, civil society organisations, Member States, agencies and other bodies and programmes of the UN, intergovernmental and regional organisations, national human rights institutions and experts to focus on upholding the rights of minorities. Your focus on humanitarian issues is extremely timely. This is a period of dramatic volatility. Current levels of humanitarian needs are the highest since the Second World War. As 2016 draws to a close there is little indication that the scale and intensity of most of these humanitarian emergencies are diminishing. To the contrary – violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law are escalating in many conflicts and spreading to more. Hospitals are bombed, entire towns are beseiged, people are deliberately starved or driven from their homes. We are also seeing warning signals indicating several additional situations may be approaching critical turning-points. Today's discussion of ways to better protect the rights of minority groups before, during and after humanitarian crisis is indeed urgent. Whether a humanitarian emergency stems from conflict, environmental disaster or pandemic, members of minority communities are among the most vulnerable of victims. Firstly because all pre-existing human rights concerns – and notably discrimination, exclusion and structural inequalities – are likely to be exacerbated in crisis. If authorities were indifferent to the concerns of minorities prior to disaster, they are unlikely to focus on them in an emergency situation. But in addition, today's conflicts are frequently driven by discrimination – by sectarian ideologies that seek to dominate or crush other identities. When the primary goal is to drive out minority groups and eradicate their identity, the suffering of women, men and children will be acute. Six months ago, with all humanitarian actors at the outer limit of their capacity to manage today's emergencies, the Secretary-General convened a World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to try to promote greater collective responsibility for reducing risk and alleviating suffering in humanitarian emergencies. Member States, humanitarian and development actors pledged to step up their action and better integrate their work. Yet last week, OCHA - the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - announced massive funding gaps for multiple emergencies – stark evidence of widespread failures of foresight and compassion. My Office has markedly increased its action in the humanitarian context in recent years. In Istanbul, we committed to further strengthening that engagement – particularly in order to ensure that due attention is