Centre Internacional Escarre per a les minorities etniques I les nacions Dear Delegates, and Madame Chair, it is an honor to be here today. I am [inaudible], I represent CIEMEN, a Catalan entity that works to promote and make known the Catalan national reality and to disseminate knowledge about stateless peoples and nations. We understand stateless nations as a community of people who identify and recognize themselves as a group, but do not identify with a state or do not have the legal capacity to act and defend their collective rights. From our point of view, incorporating the collective rights of peoples generates opportunities for minorities, generates a more democratic and inclusive framework. The main problem in the exercise of their right to selfdetermination is that it is only considered applicable in those countries with official colonial status or in others, which [inaudible] geographical separation from the metropolis shows its colonial status. Many stateless nations find the possibility of benefiting from the right to self-determination hindered as a consequence of the difficulty of finding a convention. This [inaudible] … in a truly fragile context and encourages military conflict in countries where their fundamental rights as a minority are not frequently recognized, starting with their right to participate in elections for example. We recommend incorporating the recognition of the collective rights of peoples, beyond the recognition of individual human rights, because the degree of respect for individual rights depends on the degree of respect for the rights of the human community. The other great aspect that [inaudible] is that we consider minorities as people, not minorities. The current framework places [inaudible]. Catalan is not a minority language, it is minoritized.