PART TWO: CONTENT OF COMPREHENSIVE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW II. REMEDY SUMMARY PART TWO – II • Anti-discrimination laws should provide for effective remedy for discrimination. Remedy includes, but is not limited to: sanctions for those found responsible for discrimination; reparations, including recognition, compensation and restitution for victims of discrimination; and institutional and societal measures designed to address the social causes and consequences of discrimination. • Anti-discrimination laws should provide for sanctions for discrimination that are effective, dissuasive and proportionate. • Anti-discrimination laws should provide for recognition and reparation for victims of discrimination, including in the form of compensation, restitution and rehabilitation. Reparations should be victim focused and equality sensitive. • Anti-discrimination laws should empower courts and bodies with responsibility for determining cases of discrimination to order such institutional or societal measures as are appropriate to correct, deter and prevent discrimination and to ensure non-repetition. • In situations in which national laws specify types of remedies for victims of discrimination, such lists of possible remedies should not be exhaustive; courts and other adjudicating bodies should have discretion and scope to fashion remedies that are appropriate in type, scope and order to the harm at issue in any particular case. States do not meet their obligation to provide protection from discrimination by simply prohibiting discrimination in law. They must also ensure that the right to non-discrimination is effective in practice. One essential element in securing this effectiveness is ensuring that violations of the right are remedied, sanctions are applied, victims are provided with recognition, recompense and restitution, and measures are taken to ensure non-repetition. The right to effective remedy for discrimination encompasses a number of elements. First, effective remedy entails bringing perpetrators to justice and ensuring the application of effective sanctions. Second, it requires equality-sensitive reparations in the form of compensation for material and non-material damage, together with such measures of restitution and rehabilitation as are required to restore victims to the situations that they would have enjoyed had the discrimination not occurred. Equality-sensitive reparations are those that “take into account pre-existing … relations and power imbalances” between different groups “to ensure a fair assessment of the harm inflicted” and “equal access to – and benefits from – reparation”.567 Included within reparation is the essential element of recognition of harm, including, where relevant, due public recognition. Third, effective remedy requires the adoption and implementation of measures that go beyond addressing and correcting the harm to a complainant and instead focus on remedying and addressing the causes and consequences of historic, structural or systemic discrimination. These three different elements of remedy can be understood as victim-centred, perpetrator-focused and societally directed, respectively. The third group of remedies can be understood as including both institutional remedies and societal remedies. Institutional remedies are those that mandate the elimination of discriminatory laws, policies or practices and require such organizational or structural reforms or changes as are necessary to rectify discrimination and prevent repetition. Societal remedies include education and sensitization programmes, public memorials and apologies and other measures designed to remedy past disadvantage, address the root causes of discrimination, expose, discuss and address prejudices, stereotypes and stigma, and build solidarity with affected persons and groups. Remedies of this nature reflect the importance of non-repetition as an essential element of effective 567 Secretary-General, “Guidance note of the Secretary-General: reparations for conflict-related sexual violence” (2014), pp. 4–5. Available at www.ohchr.org/Documents/Press/GuidanceNoteReparationsJune-2014.pdf. See also Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general recommendation No. 33 (2015). 75