A/65/287 innovative unit established in March 2008, plays an important role. The team is on call to provide expertise on specific issues to United Nations initiatives to mediate in situations of conflict or potential conflict. This team has provided support and advice to peacemaking and dialogue efforts in several situations involving minorities, including Darfur, Iraq, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines. The Department has a focal point on indigenous peoples, but not one on minorities. The standby team currently includes an expert on power-sharing, but does not include a professional with more comprehensive expertise on minority rights. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also has an Early Warning and Contingency Planning Section. 70. The Inter-Agency Framework for Coordination on Preventative Action (Framework team) is an informal forum for inter-agency exchange of information and collaboration involving 21 different United Nations entities (A/64/864, paras. 7-13). The Framework team is a mechanism that shares information on potential crises and works together to support the development of inter-agency conflict prevention initiatives. As such it is a key part of the United Nations conflict prevention architecture. The Framework team is designed to support the Resident Coordinator and the United Nations country team in countries that show early signs that a situation, whether at the regional, national or subnational level, is likely to lead to violence. The programme initiatives are designed to address the issues at the early upstream stage in the conflict cycle, so that the situation does not escalate into overt conflict. 71. Good practice exists at the policy level and in field operations, as illustrated by examples provided by the specialized agencies of the United Nations. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) operates an early warning system in some of its in-country programmes, often using sophisticated computer mapping, which is designed to map specific local conditions, such as movements of security forces and displaced peoples, presence of weapons, availability of basic services and access to water sources. In some situations a process of broad consultations with local communities is incorporated. UNDP has developed a capacity to identify the root causes of conflicts, notably through deployment of peace and development advisers to country teams who help in conducting conflict analyses. Experience has shown that context-specific systems that mix qualitative and quantitative indicators and political analysis are effective, if highly resource intensive. 72. The Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, a conflict prevention bureau within UNDP, currently has no focal point on minorities either; however, UNDP has recently enhanced its understanding of minority issues in development processes through a series of workshops resulting in a resource guide and toolkit for UNDP field staff, which includes guidance on addressing conflict situations. 73. In Guyana, a project carried out jointly by the Department of Political Affairs and UNDP seeks to build national capacities for the promotion of reconciliation between ethnic groups, including through the creation of committees to enable community representatives to work out their issues themselves. In Indonesia, the Bureau spent two years working with Christian and Muslim communities, providing space for reconciliation and consensus-building. Issues such as access to civil service jobs and perceptions of respect for ethnic and religious identity were addressed. Significant improvements were achieved in the level of understanding between the communities and in the level of security. 10-48298 17