Finally, good examples of socio-economic empowerment were also introduced, among which the support of States provided to entrepreneurs from minorities in the form of specific programmes, contracts and job opportunities; active promotion of persons belonging to minorities in the labour market; financial projects supporting persons belonging to minorities in learning and finings jobs; multilingual support to and in schools and universities. Item III: Legal and structural approaches to more inclusive societies Participants were invited to explore legislation, policies and the provision of public goods and services that respect the rights of persons belonging to minorities to equality without discrimination. They were equally invited to address access to health care, including through proportionate investment in infrastructure or development, educational and economic inequalities, to examine how legislation can increase opportunities that honour and represent minority identities and to discuss the importance of ensuring equal access without discrimination to technology and fostering digital literacy within minorities. Presentations on this topic were made by the following panellists: Dr. Corinne Lennox, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Mr. Farooq Aftab, Legal Adviser, Human Rights Committee; and Mr. Slava (Veaceslav) Balan, PhD Candidate and Part-time Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Dr. Corinne Lennox focused her intervention on global governance and the role of the UN in providing legal and structural approaches to more inclusive societies. She noted that UN’s legal mechanisms for minorities are very limited, and minorities are one of the few groups without being addressed by a specific treaty. She added that there is also a fundamental structural problem at the UN regarding spaces for minority participation in that the UN’s only dedicated space for national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and groups affected by work and descent-based discrimination, including caste-based discrimination, is the two days annual UN Forum on Minority Issues. Dr. Lennox noted that this lack of a UN space for minorities also impacts policy development in that while the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development mentions indigenous peoples six times, it does not mention minorities even once, and indigenous peoples constitute one of the so-called major groups with a structural platform to engage with the High-Level Political Forum on the SDGs, whereas minorities do not constitute such a group. She emphasized that given that the UN is using the major groups as platforms for civil society input, without a major group structure, minorities risk to be left out from the UN’s ‘Summit for the Future’ and its planned outcome document ‘Pact for the Future’ and for the same reason from the Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Co-operation. In her concluding remarks, Dr. Lennox recommended the Forum to be strengthened and reformed, to create a major group for minorities and that national and policy developments incorporate also measures on cultural rights and the rights of persons belonging to minorities to participate in policy development.12 Mr. Farooq Aftab invited the participants of the Forum to cast an eye over the situation of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan that can be. Due to the Second Amendment to the Pakistani Constitution and Ordinance XX, persons belonging to this community can be subject to persecution and the abuse of their minority rights. Mr. Aftab pointed out that the Ahmadiyya Muslims have been attacked, sentenced to death, stripped of their right to vote, they have faced ominous cyber and anti-terror legislation, as well as criminalization of their deeply held religious practices, and their places of worship are desecrated. He emphasized the importance of legislation to address disparities and to recognize and celebrate the unique contributions of minority communities to the collective tapestry. He noted that the laws must go beyond shielding against discrimination; they should act as catalysts for preserving and cherishing minority cultures. Mr. Aftab noted the importance of a free and independent 12 The integral version of the statement of Dr. Corinne Lennox can be consulted here. 8