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Senior Runnymede researcher blogs from UN event

15 December 2010

Very shortly to be fashioned into a blog elsewhere on this site, read comments sent from our head of financial inclusion research Omar Khan on the UN event he is attending in Geneva.

Monday 13 December 2010:

I arrived in Geneva for the Minority Issues Forum at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the afternoon session I heard horrific stories and saw brutal photos of minorities in the north of Uganda being tortured. We also heard a women's rights campaigner in Pakistan explain that 20 million people are still displaced from the flood. She spoke of efforts to save a Christian woman from execution for blasphemy. There were many other contributions, including from Kurds in Iran, Bedouin in the West Bank and Assyrians in Iraq. Their brave and difficult presentations mean that I am thinking how best to ensure my presentation on financial inclusion, based primarily on ethnic minorities in the UK and Europe, has wider relevance.

Tuesday 14 December 2010:

This morning on heard speeches on making land rights and properties rights effective for minorities in the US, Bangladesh, Israel, Colombia, post-conflict Eastern Europe and Africa. It's good to share experiences and also to discover some good policies, however few.

Thinking about effectively ownership rights made me wonder how we ensure that everyone benefits from the UK Coalition Government's proposed community right-to-buy schemes. If we are all meant to benefit, we should all have some say and control over those assets, even if in a non-financial way. If I have no say or control over an asset, it's pretty meaningless to say I have ownership of it, as minorities in the Global South unfortunately know too well.

Wednesday 15 December 2010:

Today I presented at the UN Forum on Minority Issues, organised by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. My presentation was titled 'Financial Inclusion, Ethnicity and Policy Action', and was based on Runnymede's ongoing financial inclusion programme
 
I explained why financial inclusion is crucial for the participation of ethnic minorities in social and economic life, but also why we need a more expansive conception of financial inclusion to make ethnic minority participation a reality. Financial institutions are unlikely to offer products or set up offices in low-income areas, either in urban Europe or rural Asia or Africa, as the potential customers in these areas are either very risky or offer little opportunity for significant financial returns. I received positive feedback on my speech, including from the official 'Independent Expert on Minority Issues', Ms Gay McDougall.
 
My speech followed that of a professor at the Federal Univeristy of Rio de Janeiro, a Tanzanian member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and a Romanian member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
  
There are a large number of civil society organisations present here in Geneva, and they have the opportunity to press their cases in this important forum. Quite a few official delegations have either made statements in support of minority issues (including Hungary, Brazil, Russia and South Africa), a few have responded directly to interventions from civil society in their countries, while others have responded to each other on specific points.
 
While the forum provides an important space for civil society to challenge governments on their treatment of minorities, it is important that the recommendations that have been drafted are fully implemented to make the equal treatment of minorities a reality. Many of the proposals, including more use of positive action, could potentially benefit ethnic minorities in the UK.