UNITED NATIONS • Forum on Minority Issues decisions of the national polity because they are subject to multiple forms of discrimination owing to their status as women, and as minorities. Ensuring effective political participation for minority women not only ensures their participation in decision-making on issues directly affecting them but also helps to ensure that society as a whole benefits from their contribution and truly reflects its diversity. 1. Governments and parliaments 65. Governments should adopt a policy statement that recognizes the diversity in their respective societies with regard to gender, race, ethnicity, religion and language. They should develop plans and programmes to ensure the effective political participation of all sectors of society. These plans should explicitly require measures to promote the participation of minority women, including the adoption of positive measures to increase their participation, the development of educational programmes and campaigns to promote minority women’s political participation, measures to ensure diversity and multiculturalism among public administration staff, and the allocation of sufficient resources to realize identified objectives. Minorities, including minority women, should be fully involved on an informed basis in debates on the design of plans and programmes. The establishment of a specific mechanism or institutional procedure to monitor progress achieved in increasing minority participation, with a specific focus on minority women’s participation and their equal and meaningful representation in political life at all levels should be considered. 66. Obstacles preventing the effective political participation of minority women should be identified and addressed through laws, policy and programme measures. 67. Literacy, language or religious or other requirements that unfairly or disproportionally exclude minority women from the right to vote or from standing for elected office at the national, regional or local level should be removed, given that they breach the prohibition of discrimination and result in women belonging to minorities not being able to effectively participate in political life. Governments should develop mechanisms to tackle the root causes of such exclusion. 68. Governments should intensify their efforts to ensure fair and adequate participation of all minority women in political life and public service. They should elaborate innovative initiatives and tailored measures aimed at increasing and strengthening minority women’s representation and participation, including, for example, support for women’s committees, leadership training initiatives, mentoring programmes, awareness-raising campaigns, networking and the sharing of good practices. Such measures should also aim at ensuring that women who have a role in decision-making bodies are able to play that role effectively, namely, that they know and understand their duties, are not discriminated against or prevented from carrying out those duties because of prejudice, do not face any backlash or violence for taking up those roles and are not given positions as a token gesture. 58 Compilation of Recommendations of the First Four Sessions 2008 to 2011