United Nations First Forum on Minority Issues - Minorities and Right to Education Palais des Nations – Geneva 15 December 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Report Marselha Gonçalves Margerin – Advocacy Director On behalf of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights ( RFK Center) I would like to thank the UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay MacDougall and her colleagues of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights for the initiative in realizing this first U.N. Forum on Minority Issues with focus on minorities and Right to Education. I appreciate indeed the opportunity to make a brief presentation introducing the RFK Center Report on the state of Right to Education of Afro-descendant and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and make some comments based on the Forum Draft Recommendations. Formerly known as RFK Memorial, the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights has been advocating for social justice as per former US Senator Robert F. Kennedy ideals. Every year a human rights defender is awarded with the RFK Human Rights Award and the Center starts a partnership with that defenders. RFK Center has 38 human rights laureates from 22 countries. RFK Center has partnered with its laureates from Guatemala, Colombia and Dominican Republic to present a comprehensive, multi-national report on the state of the right to education in the Americas that was originally prepared for a thematic hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. (www.rfkcenter.org) To craft such report, the RFK Center also worked together with other grassroots advocates as well as researchers from international human rights law clinics at Cornell Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. The information presented at the report was based on interviews with affected populations, community representatives and government officials in Guatemala, Colombia and Dominican Republic which were conducted over the past year and a half. Providing these country overviews represent only three examples of a larger regional problem pervasive throughout the Americas, it was not meant to reflect any bias against any particular country or countries. The report examines countries national, regional and international obligations through a methodology that intersects the analyses of structural, process and outcome indicators and the Four-As Framework. The findings in our report point that structural discrimination against migrant workers and their families, ethnic minorities and IDP population in which most cases are Afro-descendants, and against indigenous