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January 11, 2013 7:01PM EST

Discrimination, Inequality, and Poverty—A Human Rights Perspective

Accepted under the "Addressing Inequalities" Global Thematic Consultation - Call for Proposals for Background Papers, 2012

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A woman with mobility impairments uses a hand-crank bicycle to move around her village. After 20 years of displacement and war in northern Uganda, women with disabilities - physical, sensory, mental and intellectual - face an even more complex and grueling process of return and relocation than their neighbors. They experience stigma and sexual violence and are often denied access to health care and justice.
 © 2010 Martina Bacigalupo para Human Rights Watch
Executive Summary
Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. That said there is a growing body of evidence that human rights-based approaches, and these key guarantees in particular, can lead to more sustainable and inclusive development results.[i]
Discrimination can both cause poverty and be a hurdle in alleviating poverty. Even in countries where there have been significant gains toward achieving the MDGs, inequalities have grown. The MDGs have supported aggregate progress—often without acknowledging the importance of investing in the most marginalized and excluded, or giving due credit to governments and institutions which do ensure that development benefits these populations. Recognition of this shortcoming in the MDGs has brought an increasing awareness of the importance of working to reverse growing economic inequalities through the post-2015 framework, and a key element of this must be actively working to dismantle discrimination.[ii]
The post-2015 framework should be grounded in afundamental guarantee of equality and non-discrimination. Under international law, this requires states to identify and eliminate discrimination and ensure equality. This may require legislative or administrative reform to repeal discriminatory provisions or address discriminatory practices by the government or private actors, a change in resource allocation, or educational measures. The post-2015 frameworkshould embody the responsibility of states, when acting together or alone, to take proactive measures to identify and address entrenched discrimination, both direct and indirect. Itshould embody the responsibility of states, international institutions, and corporations to avoid and remedy discrimination for which they are directly or indirectly responsible. The framework should go some way toward achieving this by including goals, targets, and indicators directed at reducing discrimination and ensuring that the social and economic needs of the most marginalized communities are being addressed fairly, and at reducing wealth inequalities more broadly.