PART TWO: CONTENT OF COMPREHENSIVE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW achieve equality for groups that have been or are subject to discrimination or disadvantage. Treaty bodies have advised strongly against calling such measures “positive discrimination”.439 PART TWO – I While a wide range of different measures may qualify as positive action, all positive action involves targeted measures to overcome inequality; or, as the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has put it: “adopting or maintaining certain advantages in favour of an underrepresented or marginalized group”.440 As noted below, positive action measures are sometimes seen as remedial of past or ongoing systemic harm,441 and thus may be at least partly derived from the obligation to ensure an effective remedy. That said, the obligation to implement positive action measures arises in situations in which substantive inequalities are identified, irrespective of any evidence of past or present discrimination. An argument has been advanced that “positive action” should be understood broadly, as including all proactive initiatives taken to achieve progress towards equality and eliminate discrimination.442 However, the settled view is that – distinct from general measures to promote equality and combat discrimination – positive action entails targeted treatment aimed at correcting disadvantage for particular identified people and groups. 443 Because such measures involve treating people and groups who share particular characteristics differently, treaty bodies have provided guidance on how to distinguish positive action from unjustified differentiation (discrimination) and have set out standards to regulate its application. To meet States’ international law obligations, comprehensive anti-discrimination law should both require the adoption of positive action in situations in which substantive inequalities exist and permit State and private actors to develop and implement such measures where a need is identified. While anti-discrimination laws should both require and permit positive action, the detail of such measures may be set out in other law and policy documents. POSITIVE ACTION MEASURES: ENSURING WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN DECISIONMAKING IN RWANDA In 2018, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) noted that Rwanda had made “incredible progress” in ensuring women’s participation in decision-making as a result of a number of special measures taken by the State.444 The journey to increased participation began with the country’s 2003 Constitution. Article 9 (4) of the 2003 Constitution mandated that women should be granted at least 30 per cent of posts in decisionmaking organs, while article 76 required that 24 of the 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies were reserved for women, elected by a special electoral college system composed of voters from local women’s councils and district councils. On 19 June 2010, Rwanda enacted Law No. 27/2010, which requires that at least 30 per cent of candidates for parliamentary elections on the lists of political parties be women.445 In its concluding observations in 2017, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women welcomed the State’s “leading role regarding the participation of women in Parliament, having 439 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has noted that the phrase “positive discrimination” is, in the context of international human rights law, a contradiction in terms and so should be avoided. See Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, general recommendation No. 32 (2009), para. 12. 440 Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, general comment No. 6 (2018), para. 28. 441 For instance, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has recognized that the implementation of gender quotas to increase the political participation of women in government are part of other measures that seek to tackle historical systemic barriers that women face in accessing their right to political participation. See further: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, The Road to Substantive Democracy: Women’s Political Participation in the Americas (OEA/Ser.L/V/II, Doc. 79) (2011), paras. 62 and 82. 442 For further discussion on this point, see Chantal Davies, Research Report 123: Exploring Positive Action as a Tool to Address UnderRepresentation in Apprenticeships (Manchester, Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2019), pp. 26–28, and the materials cited therein. 443 See, for example, Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 18 (1989), para. 10 (“such action may involve granting for a time to the part of the population concerned certain preferential treatment in specific matters as compared with the rest of the population”); and Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, general comment No. 6 (2018), para. 28 (“specific measures … entail adopting or maintaining certain advantages in favour of an underrepresented or marginalized group” in order to achieve equality). 444 UN-Women, “Revisiting Rwanda five years after record-breaking parliamentary elections”, 13 August 2018. 445 CEDAW/C/RWA/CO/7-9, para. 4 (i). 57