by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which had also paid particular attention to the different obstacles faced by indigenous women and girls in the implementation of these rights. She informed Forum participants that the Expert Mechanism had recently initiated the preparation of two different studies, the first on indigenous peoples and the right to participate in decision-making process during the implementation of industrial projects on their territories and the second focusing on the role of language and culture in promoting and protecting the well-being and identity of indigenous peoples. She underlined that particular attention would also be paid to the situation of indigenous women in the preparation of both studies. Ms. Kareen Jabre, from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), presented the work done by IPU to guarantee the rights of all women to political participation, underlining that there can be no democracy without equal participation of men and women, also stressing the link between democracy and effective participation of persons belonging to minorities, including women. She explained that IPU’s three objectives are first to increase the number of women in parliaments, second to support and enhance women parliamentarians’ work to parliament and third to enhance parliament’s capacity to address and defend women’s rights and equality between men and women. The other area of IPU’s work is on legal reforms and to take advantage of democratic transitions to introduce reforms to advance women’s political participation, which includes training sessions on CEDAW. She mentioned the need to reform parliaments in order to transform them into gender-sensitive institutions. She noted the importance to look at what happens next when minority women are in parliament and whether they are able to have an impact on the decisions taken and promote minority rights. With this in mind, she noted that IPU supports women’s parliamentary committees on gender issues and human rights, women’s caucuses and gender mainstreaming initiatives in parliaments in order to promote gender equality. She mentioned that IPU would be working on facilitating networking among minority women via the “Iknowpolitics” network; would continue raising awareness on women in politics, with a specific focus on minority women; would be working on providing gender disaggregated data on minorities, including their political participation and would be trying to develop research on the intersection between special electoral measures for women and minorities. Discussion The Chairperson opened the floor for discussion9. During the discussion under Item IV, participants identified the following aspects in relation to minority women and effective political participation: • The usefulness of quota systems in some situations to increase the political participation of minority women. 9 The list of speakers, and when available the full text of their presentations, can be found on the Forum’s web site at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/minority/session4.htm 14