around the world. It brings human rights protection more clearly to the centre of the UN's work, and ensures that human rights information and analysis will be more rapidly available, forming the basis for coherent, system-wide strategies in response to the risk of serious human rights violations and atrocities. This initiative offers a unique opportunity to integrate minority rights protection more systematically into the UN's strategies, policies and programmes for prevention — making it potentially a very powerful instrument of change. I also consider the work that is done here in this Forum to be essential. As the 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Minorities clearly states, minority rights are essential to ensure equality,