Mr Ira Beldjebel and Mr Jugal Kishore Ranajit, presented on the “Rights of Religious Minorities” first underlining the remaining challenges before they proceeded with their recommendations that included to call on Governments to guarantee the right to change one’s religion or belief, to abolish discriminatory provisions related to religious affiliations in constitutions and national legislation, to adopt laws addressing incitement to religious hatred and violence and to promote inter-faith dialogue bringing together youth belonging to minorities and the majority. They further invited young minority rights advocates to create a Forum for inter-faith dialogue, put creative ideas into action, such as summer/training camps for minority and majority youth, and the use of social media network to spread tolerance while raising awareness of the Declaration. Item IV. Practical use of the Declaration: identification of good practices and positive measures Under this agenda item, the discussion focused on national laws, policies and practices that have been developed to foster the rights of persons belonging to minorities, and their impact on the full enjoyment of their rights by minorities. Successful awareness-raising activities and projects developed by various stakeholders were presented. Governments were invited to describe their political, economic, social and cultural policies designed to support and promote equal rights and opportunities for persons belonging to minorities. Minorities discussed the role that they can and should play in raising awareness of the Declaration and in ensuring its implementation at different levels. They also shared their positive grass-roots experiences as individuals and members of a minority group. Mr Antti Korkeakivi, Chief of the Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section at the OHCHR provided an “Overview of activities conducted to mark the 20th anniversary of the Declaration on Minority Rights by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and way forward” which included Geneva-based initiatives as well as four regional anniversary activities, namely in Vienna, Bangkok, Bishkek and Doha, focusing on some of the most urgent and topical minority rights’ themes, including the situation of religious minorities, advancing the participation of minorities in poverty reduction and development strategies and how to reflect diversity in the process of constitutional reforms, while further exploring ways to use the principles of the Declaration to address them. Ms. Lotta Sylwander, Representative of UNICEF in Viet Nam, presented on “UNICEF’s Ethnic Minority Strategy and Mother Tongue Bilingual Education programme”. Following on a brief overview of the situation of minorities in the country, she indicated that opportunities to benefit from the fast socio-economic development had not been equally distributed among different ethnic groups so far. On education, she underlined that while Viet Nam had made significant strides, substantial disparities persisted between the majority and ethnic minorities for various reasons, including the fact that ethnic minority children do not have or have very limited access to education in their mother tongues. To address this, since 2008, UNICEF has been supporting the Ministry of Education and Training to implement the mother tongue-based bilingual education programme through Action Research in three provinces with three different ethnic minorities. Curricula and materials have been developed in local languages based 7