Eleventh Session of the Forum on Minority Issues Statement by the Chairperson of the Forum Ms. Rita Izsák-Ndiaye Mr President, Mr Special Rapporteur, Dear Friends and Colleagues, It is a privilege to be here again at the UN Forum on Minority Issues which is indeed so dear to my heart. I am touched by the kind welcoming words and I also wish to thank Hungary for nominating me and the President of the Human Rights Council for entrusting me to carry our this important function. It is true that I am not new to this Forum but I am certainly new to this role and I count on your kind cooperation during these two days so we can have an engaging and productive session. I would like to congratulate to the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Mr. Fernand de Varennes for choosing such an important and timely theme as one of his priority focuses for his mandate and for our discussion here today and tomorrow. Statelessness is a disturbing worldwide phenomenon which is very often a cause and a consequence at the same time of systematic discrimination of national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities and so it is very fitting that a full session of the Minority Forum is dedicated to this subject. We all want to belong. There are countless studies and experiments that prove that all human beings have a core desire to be part of a group, of an establishment, of a society. From the beginning of history, excluding members from a certain community and thus subjecting them to become disempowered, worthless and voiceless has been one of the gravest punishments. So was it also in Roma culture and through the existence of Romani Kris, a traditional court for conflict resolution, where the most extreme sentence was a permanent exclusion from the Romani community, considered to be the most horrific fate possible for a Roma person. Belonging gives us a sense of worth, dignity, equality, community and protection. Whether it is because of gaps in nationality and civil status laws, changes of borders, migration, forced displacement or any other reason, the impact of statelessness on an individual, a state and the international community as a whole is severe. Not only that it leads to barriers in accessing fundamental rights and almost every basic service but it also deeply damages