On 18 February 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) handed down the judgment in the case of Andrejeva v. Latvia (Application no. 55707/00). The applicant, Ms. Natalija Andrejeva, claimed a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No.1 (right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions) and Article 6 (right to fair trial).
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Today, on the inaugural World Day of Social Justice, The Equal Rights Trust (ERT) wrote to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, welcoming the event as an important step to raise awareness on social inequality, poverty and the widening gap between the most and the least advantaged globally. In the letter ERT appealed to the Secretary-General to promote the Declaration of Principles on Equality and to recommend it to relevant UN organisations and agencies.
London, 23 January 2009
Today, The Equal Rights Trust (ERT) wrote to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thailand expressing deep concern over the fate of 126 Rohingya who had been held incommunicado since 16 January 2009 and subsequently forcefully expelled by being put on a boat and cast adrift in international waters. The victims of these abuses are stateless persons, members of a minority deprived of their Myanmar citizenship through discriminatory legislation in Myanmar, and do not have the protection of any state. Stateless persons are among the most vulnerable victims of discrimination and other human rights violations globally.
London, 9 January 2009
London, 8 January 2009
On 1 January 2009, the United States Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 entered into force. The purpose of the Amendments Act is to restore the intent and protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA 1990).
London 19 December 2008
On 18 December 2008, in New York, the UN General Assembly was presented with a statement endorsed by 66 states from around the world calling for an end to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The statement, read out by the UN Representative for Argentina Jorge Arguello, condemns violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also condemns killings and executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights on those grounds.
As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 60 this Wednesday, international think-tank The Equal Rights Trust (ERT) is warning that, in a global recession, governments worldwide must put equality at the centre of human rights legislation or risk creating more marginalised ‘sub-human’ peoples, such as the Roma in Europe and lower castes in South Asia.
The launch of the Declaration of Principles on Equality, on 21 October 2008 in London, marked the beginning of a "Vote for Equality" campaign for its universal recognition. The Declaration should become the basis for a new covenant on equality in the 21st Century.
More than 120 of the world’s leading human rights and equality experts are today calling for the most radical re-think of equal rights in two generations as global economic turmoil holds nations in its grip.
Signatories from 44 nations are urging governments and individuals to back a new declaration – 60 years after the epoch-making Universal Declaration on Human Rights followed in the wake of World War II.
London, 3 September 2008
On 18 August 2008, the Supreme Court of California, in the case of North Coast Women’s Care Medical Care Group, Inc., et al., v. San Diego County Superior Court, S 142892. Ct. App. 4/1 D045438, rejected the argument that the right to religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed by both federal and state law, exempted a medical clinic’s physicians from complying with the prohibition against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation set out in the California Unruh Civil Rights Act (the Act).
