8th January 2018
The Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson hold the conference “Effective Protection Against Discrimination: How to Become the Best at What We Do?” in the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania on the 20th December.
Patrick Charlier, Member of the Executive Board of EQUINET, the European Network bringing together equality bodies across Europe, spoke about the international requirements for equality bodies. In his interview before the conference Mr. Charlier states the indispensability of strong and independent equality bodies to overcoming discrimination in society.
What are the three main things that are necessary for an equality body to ensure the highest standards of effectiveness?
One of the three main aspects for equality bodies is the mandate. The equality bodies are independent state bodies established to implement equal treatment legislation and must have a broad mandate to promote and support the achievement of full equality in practice and to combat and eliminate all forms of discrimination in all areas of society.
Also, equality bodies must have the complete independence so that, without interference from any interest groups, they could realize their full potential in accordance with their legal mandate. This includes implementation of their powers as they deem most appropriate, setting their own priorities and adopting positions on issues under their mandate as they see fit, raising public awareness of diversity and non-discrimination principles and choosing the way to manage their human and financial resources within the requirements of relevant legislation and good financial management.
The third important aspect is the efficiency. The equality body should fully realize its mandate and implement changes by the effective use of the resources and powers vested in it.
What should be the linkages between the equality body and national authorities: parliament and government?
An equality body/institution is a public service, founded by a law (or by the Constitution) and granted by the authorities, but at the same time it is not an administration as such. It doesn’t fall within the administrative supervision of any Government Ministry. That’s one of the conditions of the independence.
But independence means also independence from all other actors in the society, social and economic interests, civil society, medias, academics, etc. It’s like a 360° independence.
In the same time, independence doesn’t mean restraining from any contact or collaboration. On the contrary, the equality institution has to build strong relationship with all those actors, public institutions, government and parliament included, in a spirit of mutual respect of respective mandates and equal relationship. Close collaboration, common action, project, research can be developed by a mutual agreement but never imposed by one party to another.
However, investigation of individual cases and complaints by the equality body cannot be interfered by other authorities.
Upon completion of the investigation, the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson may take a decision to make a proposal to discontinue the actions violating equal rights, to issue a warning or impose a fine, to make the case public. What measures are the most effective for achieving the real change?
It depends on the type of the institution.
For promotional-type institutions it is important to provide legal advice to people who were discriminated against and offer personal and moral support, if necessary. Also, such type of institutions should take cases in their own name; appear in cases before the Courts; and act as amicus curiae. Important function of the promotional type institution is to support and monitor the implementation of positive duties on public bodies to have regard to equality in carrying out their functions as well as on private companies and civil society organizations to be planned and systematic in their approach to equality and non-discrimination.
The tribunal-type institutions usually make findings in cases of discrimination, employ sanctions and award compensation that are proportionate, effective and dissuasive, instruct perpetrators found to have discriminated to take a course of action to address the discrimination that occurred and to prevent any future recurrence.
Decisions of the institution made in cases of discrimination should be legally binding and follow-up findings should be made to ensure the implementation of them.
You are the co-director of the Belgian equality body UNIA that is leading in strategic litigation cases. What the most important achievements would you distinguish?
UNIA is more a promotional-type institution. We can litigate on the basis of the antidiscrimination law, but our first approach is to reach non-judicial solutions through mediation and conciliation.
The most known cases, at the European level, are two cases that we brought to the European Court of Justice. Those cases are of Firma Feryn (racial discrimination) and Samira Achbita (discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief).
We have also other examples of decisions on the national level (e.g. on age discrimination in employment) which raised public awareness of discrimination. Media attention played important role in achieving this outcome. Last but not least, we opened and managed more than 10.000 cases, which is a valuable sign that we have built trust and confidence from the groups experiencing discrimination. Despite these impressive numbers of cases, we are aware that there is still a high level of under-reporting of discrimination.