participate in the formulation of resulting strategies for conflict resolution is essential. It should be added that it is precisely the point at which violence has already began and consultation may appear hardest to undertake that it is most valuable. In many cases only the minority communities themselves will be able to say which protection measures are likely genuinely to improve security, and which risk making the situation worse. It is particularly important that such consultation is not limited to those communities from whose-numbers belligerents are drawn; time and again, minority communities which have no history of taking up arms and present no security threat to anyone have been targeted in conflict, and their protection needs may differ significantly from those of other communities. The second conclusion is that in those country situations of most concern, foreign military intervention is now not the exception but the norm. Whether it be the deployment of a multilateral force under the auspices of the African Union, of NATO, or the UN, a military intervention launched by a foreign government or governments, or the arming and logistical support of proxy militias by neighbouring or interested states, the great majority of countries where the threat of mass killing is acute or killing is ongoing have been subject to armed intervention, in some cases on several occasions going back a decade or more. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a case in point. There is a complex causal relationship between civilian security and armed intervention in practice. While it is possible that foreign military intervention may halt an episode of mass civilian killing or decease its intensity, it may also prolong or intensify killing, or even initiate a general conflict where there was none before. In some cases, it may end one conflict, but start another; or have the effect of shifting violence away from one people or population group onto another or others. Often debates on pillar III of the Responsibility to Protect, concentrating as they often do on the single question of whether it is right to launch an intervention, seem simplistic and out of step with the reality of multiple and continuous interventions in situations where minorities face current violence from multiple actors. Perhaps one thing that this UN Forum can do is to ensure that in such situations the voices of minorities are not silenced. Since the occupation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in March 2014 by the Russian Federation, the minority Crimean Tatar population have been subject to numerous cases of violence, intimidation, and even enforced disappearance. Attempts by activists to raise attention to such incidents outside the Crimea, have also been met with violence and intimidation. On 18 September a leading Tatar human rights defender was dragged from his car by unidentified men, beaten, and had his passport stolen, preventing hirn attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York and the OSCE HDIM meeting in Poland, where he was due to speak. The Russian Federation needs to make full efforts to investigate and resolve cases of forced disappearances and violence towards Crimean Tatar activists and to prevent the stifling of civil society and other representatives of the Crimean Tatar. In particular,