On 21 May, the Trust’s Director, Jim Fitzgerald, participated in an online event to formally launch A Promise Not Realised: The Right to Non-Discrimination in Work and Employment, a comparative research report developed by the Trust in partnership with the Solidarity Center’s International Lawyers Assisting Workers Initiative.
The report, published in February, seeks to address two main questions: (1) why does discrimination in the workplace persist despite widespread state commitments to eliminate it? and (2) how can countries create enabling environments to effectively prevent workplace discrimination and remedy it when it occurs? Drawing on the findings of a comparative analysis of the equality law frameworks in six countries - Brazil, Colombia, Great Britain, India, South Africa and Tunisia – and interviews with more than 80 experts, the report identifies and systematises the wide range of barriers which mean that the promise of non-discrimination at work remains unrealised. It makes specific, concrete recommendations for states on measures needed to strengthen their legal frameworks on equality to ensure non-discrimination in work and employment.
The official launch event included the Trust’s Director, Jim Fitzgerald, who led and coordinated the research, together with experts from three of the six jurisdictions studied in the report:
- Nalini Nayak, General Secretary of the Self Employed Women's Association, Kerala, India;
- Leonardo Cardoso de Magalhães, the Federal Public Defender General at Defensoria Pública da União in Brazil; and
- Melanie Field, former Chief Strategy and Policy Officer at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Together, the experts engaged with a range of questions, including the role of unions and worker organising, how to tackle discrimination in the informal economy and the need for comprehensive equality laws.
