A/48/509/Add.1 English Page 2 ANNEX Report of a workshop on the implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities 1. The workshop on the implementation of the Declaration of the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities was organized on 6 October 1993 in New York by the Minority Rights Group in cooperation with the United Nations Association of the United States of America and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. 2. Participants welcomed the support of the Secretary-General for the Declaration as expressed in "An Agenda for Peace" (A/47/277-S/24111, para. 18), and his stress on the need for special sensitivity to the situation of minorities as well as the stability of States. The protection of enhanced minority rights by the United Nations is important and timely. The report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of the Declaration could therefore have an important impact on the way the United Nations system responds and organizes itself to address minority protections. This in turn will influence the effective preservation of human rights and international peace and security. 3. Effective implementation of the elements in the Declaration requires that all parts of the United Nations system - including each department and specialized agency - strive for greater cooperation and coordination on matters affecting the rights of persons belonging to minorities. 4. There is a critical need for relevant United Nations statistical and economic departments to carry out a regular collection and dissemination of data on the treatment of different minorities as part of their analyses provided to United Nations operational agencies. Special training may be needed to sensitize personnel on such topics. The information gathered should be disaggregated as appropriate for relevant sectoral work of departments and programmes of the United Nations and its specialized agencies. 5. Means should be established to ensure that information from the specialized agencies, Governments and all appropriate non-governmental agencies should be efficiently and promptly channelled to relevant Secretariat offices to aid in the new early warning and preventive diplomatic efforts. This too will require enhanced coordination among the various branches of the United Nations system and specialized training of field officers about the principles of human and minority rights. 6. To accomplish this, the executive head of each specialized agency and other United Nations departments and programmes should inform field officers that they have specific duties in relation to the Declaration and should prepare, circulate and analyse the results of questionnaires addressed to field officers regarding those duties. Further, the executive heads should explore means to train agency personnel appropriately and should make use of the information and expertise on the rights of persons belonging to minorities that are available from non-governmental organizations. The Department of Public Information /...