The Equal Rights Trust is an independent international organisation whose purpose is to combat discrimination and promote equality as a fundamental human right and a basic principle of social justice. Established as an advocacy organisation, resource centre and a think tank, it focuses on the complex relationship between different types of discrimination, developing strategies for translating the principles of equality into practice.

The Equal Rights Trust is governed by an international Board of Trustees and is registered as a charity under UK law. It opened office in January 2007. 

The strategies for achieving the ERT goals include:

• Human rights advocacy
• Documentation of abuses of equality rights
• Strategic litigation
• Legal and policy research
• Capacity building and consulting

Much of the work of the Trust is organised according to cross-cutting thematic and country priorities, for each of which a combination of all or some of the major strategies is employed.

Long-Term Objectives

1. To document, expose and help eliminate violations of the fundamental right to non-discrimination, formulated in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and subsequent international treaties.
2. To ensure greater accountability of States and non-State actors with a view to their obligation to protect individuals against discrimination and promote equality.
3. To empower victims of discrimination in combating abuses.
4. To improve the public understanding of the right to non-discrimination and promote a broader consensus regarding equality as a value in present-day societies.
5. To contribute to developing the substantive and procedural aspects of the universal human right to non-discrimination.
6. To promote effective enforcement of existing anti-discrimination law and policies.
7. To facilitate the adoption of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and policies, without which the right to equality is not adequately protected.

The ERT Approach to Non-discrimination and Equality

• The ill-treatment in detention suffered by vulnerable ethnic minority men.
• The written law preventing a woman from inheriting property.
• The unwritten law obliging a father to kill his daughter because she is dating the wrong man.
• The immigrant stranded in a cycle of detention because he is stateless.
• The couple assaulted in a café because they appear to be gay.
• The indigenous people uprooted from their land.
• The child who will remain illiterate because she is deaf.

They all have something in common: disadvantage and discrimination. But the fight against discrimination today is fragmented, weakened by identity politics and there is little understanding of the overarching aspects of discrimination. The Equal Rights Trust works to break the closed boxes of the struggle for equality and to enhance solidarity among all who suffer from discrimination.

Taking stock of the highest achieved levels of protection against discrimination, best practices and current discussions, The Equal Rights Trust promotes a holistic, unified approach to non-discrimination and equality.

ERT is the only international organisation focusing exclusively on the right to equality and approaching equality from a unitary human rights framework. The unified framework brings together:

• The types of inequalities based on different grounds, such as race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, among others;
• The types of inequalities in different areas of life, such as the administration of justice, employment, education, provision of goods and services, etc.

The unified equality framework is expressed in the Declaration of Principles on Equality adopted and endorsed by hundreds of equality and human rights experts in October 2008. ERT aims at simplifying, harmonising, integrating and modernising the currently fragmented and incoherent ideas on and approaches to equality of rights.