Permanent Delegation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation To the United Nations Office in Geneva Mrs Aissata Kane Permanent Observer of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Seventh Session of the Forum on Minority Issues Geneva, 25-26 November 2014, Palais des Nations OIC greatly appreciates the contribution of this Forum that aims at protecting and promoting rights of national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. We endorse the need to intensify international and regional efforts in order to elaborate concrete solutions to discrimination and acts of violence and tortures against the representatives of these minorities, that may lead to genocide exceeding all human understanding. Such solutions should be according to the universally recognised rights. For this to happen, OIC believes it is necessary to coordinate actions protecting populations that experience violence and atrocities, and whose identity sometimes is even denied. Moreover, it is more than urgent for the UN agencies and mechanisms to call for compliance with international human rights law and therefore to strengthen national and regional legislative and regulatory frameworks in order to promote the rights of these minorities. In this regard, the political will of States that have the primary responsibility to protect the society and to guarantee universally recognised rights, is imperative in order to fully implement national commitments as stipulated by international law. Nevertheless, international and regional cooperation to find the best solutions to minority problems in a given country surely requires greater consultation between all parties involved. In this regard, OIC has implemented mechanisms in order to include the issue of minorities in non-member states. As a result, a department responsible for minority issues has been created within the secretary general. It is in charge of alerting the organisation on all minority situations requiring special attention. At the political level, we also set up a contact group at the ministerial level in order to find appropriate and sustainable solutions to situations which are worrying for the OIC. As an advisory board, this contact group conducts political consultations with relevant countries where minorities live in order to elaborate political and humanitarian solutions, and to promote the approach of intercultural and religious dialogue so as to prevent hate speech and to solve the abuses on the minorities in question. Thus, OIC has nominated high-level representatives from the concerned regions as special envoys to Central African Republic and Myanmar. Together with the national and international partners, they are supposed to propose solutions respectful of the rights of the religious minorities that currently and continuously experience serious violations of human rights and live in dramatic humanitarian conditions in their home countries.