A/HRC/49/46 any submission from United Nations entities or mechanisms that directly addressed the issues of conflict prevention and the protection of the human rights of minorities. 66. Many of the submissions made to the Special Rapporteur by States Members of the United Nations did include reports on their constitutional, legislative and other measures to protect the human rights of minorities, including some that referred to autonomy or internal self-determination arrangements that had been implemented in order to provide an additional layer of protection of the rights of minorities and a degree of guaranteed political representation and control over important matters for the identity of minorities. Far fewer submissions from Member States, however, made any kind of direct connections between conflict prevention and early warning measures that focused on the grievances of exclusion, discrimination and inequalities affecting minorities as potential drivers of conflict and the human rights dimensions of these grievances. 67. Submissions from civil society organizations, particularly those representing minorities and working on minority issues or in States and regions affected by conflicts, were significantly more on topic and often reflected concerns over the denial of the human rights of minorities as prime drivers of conflicts. This was particularly the case in the recommendations made by civil society organizations at the 2021 Forum on Minority Issues and the four regional forums. A recurrent theme has been the need to better protect the human rights of minorities to prevent conflicts, and the strong urging that efforts to do so should include a global instrument for elucidating specifically what the rights of minorities are, so as to better ensure their implementation – and thereby better prevent conflicts. A small number of submissions from civil society organizations raised general allegations of breaches of the rights of specific minorities, without referring directly to any conflict prevention context or issue. V. Conclusions and recommendations 68. The world seems to be darker and nastier for minorities, as well as hateful and violent. 69. The political and social landscapes in many parts of the world have for years been flashing warning signs: long-standing grievances of exclusion, discrimination and inequalities – and therefore breaches of the rights of minorities – are more often than not the precursors and drivers of today’s violent conflicts. Injunctions more than a decade ago warning that the international community needed to acknowledge and take steps to mainstream minority rights frameworks in conflict prevention initiatives went almost completely unheeded, though some States Members of the United Nations have taken steps in this direction. For their part, civil society organizations, particularly in conflict-ridden societies, have been urging action in increasingly hostile environments of intolerance, of marginalization and even of incitement to hate and violence targeting minorities, and often of rising populist majoritarian ethnocentrism. It is not unfair to describe the lack of responses at the global level as a systemic failure of the international community, since violations of the human rights of minorities are obvious warning signs of approaching conflicts. 70. The Special Rapporteur invites States, United Nations entities, regional organizations and non-governmental organizations to recall the recommendations made by the Independent Expert in her 2010 report. 71. The Special Rapporteur urges in particular United Nations entities and regional organizations to move towards the development and institutionalization of normative frameworks, based on the international human rights of minorities, that provide both relevant conflict analysis tools and conflict prevention mechanisms. 72. The Special Rapporteur recommends in particular the drafting of a global instrument on the human rights of minorities and the creation of conflict prevention mechanisms, such as the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, in order to better reflect and respond to the nature of existing and future conflicts and hence offer more targeted and relevant tools for the analysis and prevention of contemporary 16