The initiative aims at facilitating the access of civil society actors to resources related to minority rights, thus importantly complementing as well as supporting the work of the UN Forum on Minority Issues. By deploying a qualitative data analysis, each Forum statement has been categorised according to attributes such as theme, country, focus and speaker type, providing a searchable and easily filtered database. Users are able to search specific terms or phrases and to filter documents by the categories previously indicated.

The website also contains a database with all its available documents, which allows searches to be conducted across the different sources, such as reports of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues and international and regional human and minority rights standards. Moreover, with a view to inform users about developments and events related to minority issues at the UN, news from the UN Forum on Minority Issues as well as from the UN in general will be posted on the platform. In addition, new Forum statements and other relevant documents will be added and starting from 2019 the Tom Lantos Institute will publish a quarterly newsletter including legal developments, events and other opportunities related to the human rights of minorities.

Having supported some of the impressive work done by the co-creators of this platform and with the hope that the initiative will encourage, facilitate and reinforce the work done by civil society and minority organisations on minority rights, the UNPO warmly welcomes the launch of this ambitious tool.