A/77/246 national minority issues that have the potential to develop into a conflict within the CSCE area, affecting peace, stability or relations between participating States” . 12 50. At the United Nations, the same factors reignited interest in minority rights matters, particularly in relation to conflict prevention, leading the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities to invite in 1990 its Norwegian expert member, Asbjørn Eide, to undertake a study on possible ways and means of facilitating the peaceful and constructive solution of problems involving minorities (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1993/34). This study would eventually lead to the establishment of the Working Group on Minorities, 13 over which he presided between 1995 and 2004, to examine ways and means to promote and protect the rights of persons belonging to minorities, as set out in the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. T he Working Group would be replaced in 2007 by the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues, which was established by Human Rights Council in its resolution 6/15. It was also at the tail end of the era of international attention and focus on minorities and o f the activities of the Working Group in 2005, that the mandate of the then Independent Expert on minority issues was established by the Commission on Human Rights in its resolution 2005/79 and that the OHCHR Minorities Fellowship Programme training programme for human rights and minority rights defenders belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities was launched. 14 51. The 1990s and the early 2000s therefore represented something of a high point in the acknowledgment and integration of the rights of minorities at the United Nations and the recognition of the need to address the grievances of minorities, or their instrumentalization, which figured so prominently in many of the world’s conflicts. These achievements were significant and noteworthy at the time, but there were already signs that this issue lagged behind the other major human rights developments of the past twenty years for most vulnerable groups. F. Diminishing visibility of and attention to minority issues and rights at the United Nations 52. With the fading of the ideological tensions of the Cold War and conflicts at the end of the twentieth century, and the many compromises hammered out in order to prevent violent conflicts involving minorities, international atten tion and interest moved away from minorities. At the same time, there was a drive to strengthen United Nations human rights protection mechanisms, propelled in no small part by the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Confe rence on Human Rights in 1993, which sought to rally the international community to make greater efforts to respect, protect and promote human rights. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action also marked an increased focus on the rights of women, children and indigenous peoples and called for the elimination of gender-based __________________ 12 13 14 14/21 See Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Helsinki Summit Declarat ion, para. 23. The Working Group has been assessed, however, as being “on the lowest level of the hierarchy of United Nations bodies”, see Kathryn Ramsay and Chris Chapman, “Two campaigns to strengthen United Nations mechanisms on minority rights”, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, vol. 18, No. 2 (January 2011), p. 185. See also Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Minority Rights: International Standards and Guidance for Implementation (New York and Geneva, 2010), available at https://www.ohchr.org/en/publications/special-issue-publications/minorityrights-international-standards-and-guidance; see also the 2013 guidance note of the Secretary General on racial discrimination and protection of minorities, available at https://www.ohchr.org/documents/Issues/Minorities/GuidanceNoteRacialDiscriminationMinorities.pdf . 22-11516