pointed to the need for inclusive policies of access to quality education for all girls so that they can contribute to the economic and social development. The Working Group has elaborated recommendations aimed at the inclusion of girls of African descent in the education systems of States. She underlined that recommendations and specific strategies are required to ensure access to education for all minority girls, fight illiteracy and language barriers as well as the need for positive measures aimed at combating discrimination. She also highlighted the responsibilities of States in this regard and the importance of collecting disaggregated data. Ms. Kirsi Madi, UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, underlined that UNICEF was renewing their equity-focus with the aim of ensuring that their services reach the most excluded and marginalised children. She emphasized that minority populations generally lag behind in all levels of education, and recalled the unique challenges faced by minority girls, made complex by intersecting forms of discrimination, She underlined that girls from minority groups often live in remote geographic locations generally neglected by government social services and requiring travel to great distances to the nearest school, multiplying the risks for their personal security. She informed participants that UNICEF’s field presence offers them a unique opportunity and obligation to support a number of initiatives benefitting women and girls, in particular in the field of education. UNICEF advocates for all schools and education systems to be responsive to children’s rights, to be gender-sensitive and to promote gender equality in both enrolment and achievement. UNICEF proposed recommended actions, calling on Governments and societies to: implement initiatives to combat exclusion faced by women and girls, ethnic groups as well as those who live in poverty; identify those individual children and groups of children who require special measures aimed at overcoming inequalities through rigorous disaggregated data collection; invest in teacher training, including teachers from minority communities, to include anti-discrimination, gender-sensitive and intercultural training. Educational curricula should promote human rights education and gender aware materials with the aim of overcoming stereotyped and demeaning images of minorities, girls and women. Ms. Madi recognised the need for UNICEF to invigorate their own initiatives and noted that, in 2012 it would take steps towards expanding its data collection methods with a view to ensuring that minority communities would be captured in future. UNICEF had further initiated the design of the organization’s Programme Guidance on Indigenous and Minority Children that would provide country offices with more specific assistance on how to programme for and with minority children in a more systematic manner. Ms. Farah Naqvi, from India, made a presentation on “Minority women and girls in India: Critical elements to consider towards equity in education” . She highlighted that Muslim women in India have the lowest literacy indicators and formal work participation rate of women from any socio-religious community. She then made recommendations aimed at addressing the remaining obstacles to minority women and girls’ access to quality education: Addressing issues of targeted and mass violence against minority 8