• • • • • • • • • The importance of increasing the participation of minority women within electoral management bodies as well as within political parties. The impact of poverty and lack of education on minority women and their effective political participation. The efforts needed to protect and involve minority women in post-conflict and peace-building processes and the importance of creating mechanisms to ensure their effective participation in conflict resolution processes, including ensuring their physical protection against harm when necessary. The need to ensure that the protection of minorities, and minority women in particular, are included in constitution-drafting processes and of recognising and ensuring their effective and meaningful participation through such processes. The fact that poor education levels mean that elected minority women might lack the information and negotiation skills and self-confidence as compared to other elected representatives. The need for capacity-building and for improving the skills of minority women so that they can properly fulfil their obligations/roles once they have reached leadership positions. The need also for institutionalised trainings of minority women. The need to remove discriminating provisions from existing laws. The importance of ensuring freedom of association for minority women to effectively participate in political life. The need to remove all gender-based segregation, in particular in public places. The need to address and change stereotypes in some communities, particularly among minority men about the status of women in their communities. Item V. Minority women and effective participation in economic, social and cultural life10 This session focused on existing challenges faced by minority women and good practices to ensure their access to work, labour markets, sustainable livelihood activities generally undertaken by men, social security, culturally and gender-sensitive health care and childcare facilities, housing, land, property and inheritance. Ms. Pramila Patten, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), highlighted that General Recommendations issued by the Committee address the multiple forms of discrimination faced by some minority women and the need for States parties to legally recognize such intersecting forms of discrimination and prohibit them. CEDAW consistently monitors the disadvantages, obstacles and difficulties faced by minority women and regularly expressed concern about the lack of information on the situation of disadvantaged groups of women. CEDAW urges States to conduct regular research and comprehensive studies on discrimination against minority women and to collect statistics on their situation in 10 The full text of the presentations is available on the Forum’s website: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/minority/session4.htm 15