Third Session of the Forum on Minority Issues Minorities and effective participation in economic life 15 December 2010 Venue: Room XX, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland Intervention by Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch on concrete steps and measures to promote economic participation of minorities Social Watch is an international network of civil society coalitions in over 70 countries monitoring policies aimed at eradicating poverty and achieving gender justice. Since its creation, 16 years ago, Social Watch has published and disseminated over 650 national reports on those issues, many of them focusing on minorities. In the process of advocating for social, economic and cultural rights and monitoring how governments are implementing their international commitments on gender justice and poverty eradication, Social Watch has produced evidence from a variety of countries on the importance of “affirmative action” to promote specific vulnerable groups. Historically, discrimination based on ethnicity, caste, language or religion has produced deep inequities. Equal treatment under the law, while necessary, is not enough. To illustrate this point let me refer to the Gender Gap Index, that Social Watch computes every year, ranking the country situations in relation, not to the “absolute” situation of woman, but to the gap between males and females, averaging indicators in three categories: education, economic participation and political empowerment. On global average, the educational dimension reaches 90 in a scale where 100 represents perfect equality. Yet, the scale for economic activity only reaches 60 and empowerment, on global average, lags behind with a mere 34. Some countries like my own, Uruguay, have recognized women citizenship for more than 70 years and have more girls studying than boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education. There are more female university graduates than male, and yet the average female salary is still 25% less than that of males. This means that equality under the law, and even superior education does not produce an immediate impact in terms of equal participation in the economy, without vigorous affirmative action. What is true for women also applies to minorities, subject to similar prejudices when it comes to claiming a role in the economy, even in its simplest form of salaried workers. The tools of affirmative action can be many. Governments can subsidize certain sectors of the economy where minorities concentrate, they can exempt certain activities from taxation, or reduce their tax burden, they can channel government procurement to buy from specific providers, they can demand investors to hire a certain quota of workers from members of certain minorities. This is a very common practice in many countries for persons living with disabilities. Yet, in the last two decades, bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements have proliferated that may severely constrain the ability of governments to apply these tools of affirmative action. Paradoxically, this