A/HRC/19/71 knowledge of the minority languages. Governments should further ensure that officials who discriminate against minority women are effectively sanctioned. 26. Governments should conduct periodic reviews of the accessibility of key social services to minority women, with a view to identifying and removing possible barriers that may prevent minority women, including those who are victims of violence, from having access to remedies and protection. The provision of and access to refuges, shelters and social and health-care services should be culturally sensitive and secure. 27. Minority women and girls may be particularly vulnerable in conflict and postconflict situations. Peacekeeping operations and national security forces working to secure peace in regions affected by war and/or rebellion should pay particular attention to the need to protect minority groups, including the specific needs of minority women and girls. Staff members, police and military personnel should receive training on the specific needs and vulnerability of marginalized minority women and girls, in particular with regard to the use of sexual violence as an instrument of war. Women’s and minority rights should be mainstreamed in the constitution-making processes in conflict or post-conflict areas. Minority women should be included in all processes of conflict settlement and post-conflict reconstruction. Measures should also be taken to ensure access to justice for minority women and girls and accountability for those guilty of violating their rights. 28. Evidence demonstrates that minorities in all regions experience denial or deprivation of citizenship, which affects their full enjoyment of their rights and frequently leaves them stateless. The consequences of denying or depriving minority groups of citizenship are considerable. It can have a negative impact on affected persons’ living conditions and the degree of their integration in all aspects of society. These situations are sometimes compounded by discrimination against minority women, for example, with regard to the acquisition, change or retention of nationality and the conferral of nationality on their children. States are urged to review national laws or policies that may deny or deprive minority women and their children of their legitimate right to citizenship. 29. Minority women may be particularly vulnerable to trafficking in persons, particularly those living in situations of poverty or conflict, or in remote and border regions. Governments should strengthen bilateral, regional and international cooperation aimed at the elimination of trafficking in persons, especially women and children. Regional institutions should be established with concrete plans of action to combat and eliminate all forms of trafficking in persons and, which should include explicit attention to minority women and girls, as well as protection measures, in order to prevent their return to their country of origin where they might be at risk of further violence from traffickers or of retrafficking. Such institutions should pay particular attention to ensuring the recruitment of minority women within all of their programmes and to the several factors that might make minority women particularly at risk of trafficking in some situations. Counselling and support programmes should be culturally sensitive and accessible for minority women who are victims of trafficking. 30. Disadvantaged minority women and girls may also be particularly vulnerable to other contemporary forms of slavery, including forced labour, debt bondage, child labour, the sale of children, forced prostitution and forced and early marriage. Governments should put in place systematic measures to identify such practices and take robust action to eradicate violations. 31. All women have the right to protection from harmful practices, which may be found in all communities - majority or minority. Governments should take measures to eliminate all harmful practices, including those that discriminate against minority women and girls, or subject them to violence or physical injury. This process should seek and involve the collaboration of minority, traditional and religious leaders, and especially of minority 7