3 mainstreamed in the United Nations approaches or initiatives in conflict prevention: they are not even explicitly mentioned, even though once again most conflicts today are internal and involve minorities. As I am an independent expert, I can tell you that I have had UN officials tell me I should not deal with the conflict situation in Ethiopia in relation to Tigrayans, or the conflict situation in Yemen involving the Shia – because these officials rejected that these groups were minorities. They were just, groups. - Thirdly, beyond conflict prevention mechanisms there also needs to be much more robust responses to identify and address the early risk factors that can lead to conflicts: this includes the explosion of hate speech in social media, as well as the increase of hate crimes, which around the world mainly targets minorities. In many of the recommendations that have come out from the regional forums, and some of those that we’ve heard yesterday and today, it was argued that the international community needs to further enhance the human rights protection of minorities, and that it should consider developing a more detailed instrument on the human rights of minorities - A connected recommendation and point raised a number of times here but also in regional forums is that in addition to mainstreaming the human rights of minorities in all country and regional offices of the United Nations, because even at the UN, and obviously among many states, there is often a poor understanding of what are the human rights of minorities in international law. - There have been alarm bells also in the human rights of minorities being increasingly attacked in many countries through the securitisation of human rights claims, and the use of anti-terrorism and similar legislation to clamp down on the activities of human rights defenders of minorities. - One point which I also noted was that the only mechanism that links and provides a means of addressing conflict prevention and the protection of minorities is the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. Perhaps it is time for the UN to be more proactive and consider such as conflict prevention