A/HRC/23/36 time off work, thereby sacrificing hourly pay. Many people living in poverty live in remote rural locations and do not speak the official language; thus, they may find it difficult to access information about participatory processes or reach meeting venues. 44. The principle of equality and non-discrimination requires affirmative action to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities to participate. This means that the barriers that prevent vulnerable and disadvantaged groups from participating must be identified and actively tackled to ensure substantive equality. A human rights approach requires focusing on power asymmetries at the community level and on the removal of physical, economic, legal, cultural and political obstacles that prevent marginalized groups from enjoying their right to participation. Participatory processes should not only avoid perpetuating asymmetries of power in the communities, but should actively seek to enable the most disadvantaged and excluded members of the community to participate as a matter of priority. 45. Simply increasing the number of people living in poverty present in existing decision-making spaces is not sufficient. Realizing the right to participation of people living in poverty requires prioritizing their meaningful involvement from the very beginning of the process, including priority-setting, and a number of political risks (e.g., co-option and manipulation) need to be considered. 46. Before implementing the participatory process, States or other facilitators should consider and put in place the specific resources, mechanisms and strategies needed to enable the participation of people living in poverty, in particular those most marginalized and excluded. To prevent discrimination, officials must be trained and educated to avoid stigma and stereotypes. 47. Every community or demographic has its own power dynamics; therefore, even participatory mechanisms targeted at people living in poverty are vulnerable to “elite capture” by more powerful individuals within a community. Processes that do not actively reach out to new and marginalized groups will reinforce the status quo and undermine the principle of equality. Therefore, to prevent dominant groups from co-opting participatory processes, officials must be trained to detect and understand how power is exercised to control and exclude disadvantaged groups. They should diagnose and counteract power relations and ensure that their own actions do not reproduce or legitimize these power dynamics. 48. Appropriate mechanisms for coordinating participation must be developed; these should be participatory themselves. In terms of the inclusion and identification of participants, programmes must be targeted to ensure the involvement of all stakeholders who may be or perceive themselves to be affected by the policy, decision or programme in question. The principles of non-discrimination and equality necessitate that participants must be identified in a transparent and proactive way. This should include undertaking a stakeholder analysis or mapping to identify vulnerable or disadvantaged groups with a stake in the outcomes of the decision; ensuring that the most marginalized groups and communities are identified and engaged from the outset, taking into account the obstacles they face; and dedicating resources to reach out to them. 23 49. Based on the principle of equality between women and men, this preparation must include a gender analysis, and members of both sexes must be given the chance to represent their views, including, if necessary, through specially targeted consultations (for example, women-only spaces) and support. Processes to identify participants must not rely on community elites in a manner than can reinforce existing inequalities, for example by 23 12 Foti and de Silva, A Seat at the Table, p. 15.