Good morning. This is my first opportunity to address the annual Forum on Minority Issues, and I welcome all of you to this important event. This year's topic, preventing and addressing violence and atrocity crimes targeted against minorities, is a particularly vital one. Prejudice is a persistent and highly corrosive element in society. Its effect is to heighten inequalities. Poor and marginalized people then become more vulnerable to attack —from criminals, from bigots, and as the scapegoats targeted by organised campaigns egged on by unscrupulous leaders, for their own political or personal benefit. A nightmarish litany of mass atrocity crimes have taken place in human history: genocides, acts of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Several have occurred in our own