A/77/246 minorities in their staff, particularly in countries and regions where minorities and minority issues are prominent. 73. The Special Rapporteur calls for the preparation and adoption at the General Assembly of an international year or decade. 74. The Special Rapporteur is of the view that documents and activities surrounding the Sustainable Development Goals should be continuously reviewed and updated to ensure that the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable are not omitted. This means, for example, that the United Nations provide guidance on the preparation of voluntary national reviews in order for these to contain a dedicated section on the progress made in efforts towards “leaving no one behind” aimed at minorities. 75. The Special Rapporteur also reiterates the recommendations he made in his report to the Human Rights Council on minorities and conflicts. 35 This should include, in addition to mainstreaming and integrating minority rights, the conducting of appropriate minority rights training that covers ways in which the exercise of these rights may be a valuable conflict prevention and resolution tool,36 with the aim of securing permanent in-house expertise on minority issues within United Nations agencies and departments working on conflict prevention and resolution, for example, within the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and UNDP. 37 He also suggests that the United Nations could look to the practices of other organizations, such as the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, which acts as an “early warning” and if necessary “early action” mechanism, undertaking preventive, “quiet” diplomacy and proposing solutions informed by a broad understanding of approaches across various situations. In the light of the close link between domestic conflicts and “securing greater political autonomy [often] for an ethnic minority group”, measures such as internal self-determination, recognized for indigenous peoples and other forms of political autonomy and subnational governance should be part of the conflict prevention toolbox that “can help to protect the rights and interests of both minority and majority groups… thereby reducing the risk of violent conflict”.38 76. In the light of the vital roles that civil society organizations and minority representatives play in the protection and promotion of the human rights of minorities, the Special Rapporteur recommends that OHCHR reinitiate the process for submitting and adopting a resolution for the creation of a United Nations voluntary fund to financially support minority-related activities, including the participation of minority civil society organizations in the United Nations, as exists for most other groups, such as children, women, indigenous peoples, people of African descent and others. 77. The Special Rapporteur urges the General Assembly to adopt a resolution on enhancing the participation of minorities’ representatives and institutions in meetings of relevant United Nations bodies on issues affecting them, on the basis of the precedent resolution for indigenous peoples; and likewise, to include consultations with minority groups and a report by the Secretary-General, and a United Nations world conference on the rights of persons belonging to minorities. __________________ 35 36 37 38 20/21 A/HRC/49/46. Ibid., para. 73. Ibid., para. 95. Submission by Liechtenstein to the Special Rapporteur for his thematic report on “The place of the human rights of minorities in the institutions, structures and initiatives of the United Nations”. 22-11516