PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTS – A Practical Guide to Developing Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation services”, including “a legislative framework with concrete, enforceable and time-bound benchmarks”; (b) “providing for appropriate and regular training on the scope of the Convention”; (c) “ensuring that its legislation and the manner in which it is applied … does not have the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the … exercise of any right for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others”. Beyond the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, many other treaty bodies have also recognized an obligation to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities.535 Accessibility duties have also been recognized at the regional level. Article 15 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa establishes a right to “barrier free access to the physical environment, transportation, information, including communications technologies and systems, and other facilities and services open or provided to the public” and requires that States take “reasonable and progressive” measures to facilitate the full enjoyment of this right. In 2019, the European Accessibility Act was passed, establishing European Union-wide minimum accessibility standards for products and services developed from 2025 onwards.536 Accessibility on other grounds In its general comment No. 2 (2014), the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities explained that “accessibility should be viewed as a disability-specific reaffirmation of the social aspect of the right of access” established, inter alia, under article 25 (c) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee also drew a parallel to the obligation to ensure equal access to any place or service intended for use by the general public, which is provided for in article 5 (f) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,537 while acknowledging the difference between denial of access on the basis of prejudice and denial that is the result of physical or other pre-existing barriers. In both respects, the position of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reflects the fact that States have obligations to ensure non-discrimination in the enjoyment of all other human rights and in all areas of life regulated by law, and that this obligation in turn entails rights of access. Thus, for example, in its general comment No. 14 (2000) on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized that the right to health contained, among its “essential elements”, a right of accessibility: “health facilities, goods and services have to be accessible to everyone without discrimination, within the jurisdiction of the State party”.538 The Committee states that accessibility has four dimensions: non-discrimination; physical accessibility; economic accessibility (affordability); and information accessibility.539 The Human Rights Committee has noted that States have an obligation to ensure the accessibility of public administration services; in its concluding observations on Israel, the Committee found that the State should “make its public administration services fully accessible to all linguistic minorities and to ensure that full accessibility in all official languages, including Arabic, is provided”.540 In a similar vein, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has noted that “to meet the criterion of non-discrimination, education must be accessible, in both law and practice, to all girls and women”.541 Thus, while the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the only United Nations human rights instrument to explicitly articulate a duty of accessibility, it is clear that obligations to ensure equal and non-discriminatory access to human rights and to goods and services available to the public is implicit throughout the international human rights law framework. In order to meet their obligations to ensure nondiscrimination in the enjoyment of rights and access to goods and services, States are required to amend or 68 535 See, for example, CCPR/C/GIN/CO/3, para. 18; E/C.12/DNK/CO/6, para. 22; CEDAW/C/SUR/CO/4-6, para. 47; CERD/C/CAN/CO/21-23, para. 26; and CRC/C/TUV/CO/2-5, para. 38 (e). 536 Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services. 537 Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, general comment No. 2 (2014), para. 4. 538 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 14 (2000), para. 12 (b) (footnote omitted). 539 Ibid. 540 CCPR/C/ISR/CO/3, para. 23. 541 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general recommendation No. 36 (2017), para. 20.