A/HRC/FMI/2022/1 Participants will be invited to draw from the Secretary-General’s Call to Action for Human Rights,5 in which he offered a blueprint for all Governments to address long-standing issues of discrimination, including through partnerships with the grass-roots leadership of affected communities. Participants will share their views about building partnerships in support of and with minority leaders, especially minority women and young people, and will reflect on the role of the United Nations, international and regional organizations, States and donor organizations in building the capacity of civil society organizations representing minority groups for monitoring, advocacy and promoting the realization of their human rights. Participants will take stock of the situation of the civic space for minority groups, which has been highlighted in a number of Human Rights Council resolutions, including Council resolutions 32/31 and 38/12. Discussions will be centred on the means to protect and enlarge civic space for minority groups and to enhance civic participation among minorities. Participants will be encouraged to provide recommendations for addressing, preventing and reporting cases of reprisals against minority representatives who are cooperating with the United Nations to advance the implementation of the Declaration. Human rights defenders from minority groups are at the forefront of protecting and promoting the human rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minority groups – and they too need protection. As noted by the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, intimidation and reprisals disproportionally affect certain populations and groups of victims and human rights defenders whose cases are under-reported.6 The Secretary-General has also acknowledged that minority representatives are among those who are disproportionally affected by reprisals.7 4. Reform: filling the gaps in the implementation of the human rights of minorities Under this item, the Forum will consider ways to eliminate the persisting gaps in the implementation of the Declaration and means to achieve tangible progress. The SecretaryGeneral has said: “We are not dealing with gaps – we are dealing with outright inaction and negligence in the protection of minority rights.”8 Participants will also consider how preexisting obstacles, which were expanded by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, have made the implementation gaps even wider, in particular for women belonging to minority groups. Participants will take into consideration the conclusions of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, who in his reports has pointed out that minorities are more than three quarters of the world’s stateless and that their numbers are increasing, 9 that minorities in many countries are disproportionally the targets of hate speech and hate crimes, 10 that there are growing restrictions on, and even prohibition from, being educated in their own languages 11 and that, in most violent conflicts in recent decades, minorities have faced the exclusion or denial of their rights or their grievances being instrumentalized by outside forces for geopolitical reasons.12 While developing their suggestions on filling the gaps, participants will also be invited to consider the Special Rapporteur’s recent report, in which he urged the Human Rights Council to initiate a study on how to strengthen the protection of minority rights, including through a new United Nations treaty, and how to operationalize the Secretary-General’s call, in 2013, to mainstream and integrate minority rights across all pillars and activities of the United 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 See www.un.org/en/content/action-for-human-rights/index.shtml. See https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2022/09/oral-presentation-assistant-secretarygeneral-human-rights-report. See A/HRC/51/47. See www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-09-21/secretary-generals-remarks-the-high-levelmeeting-the-30th-anniversary-of-the-adoption-of-the-declaration-rights-of-persons-belongingnational-or-ethnic-religious-and. See A/HRC/40/64. See A/HRC/46/57. See A/HRC/43/47. See A/HRC/49/46. 3