PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTS – A Practical Guide to Developing Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation States to guarantee minorities the full enjoyment of Covenant and Convention rights without discrimination.847 ILO conventions also recognize the need to address discrimination and stereotypes against ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities.848 Speaking at the forty-third session of the Human Rights Council, the Government of Austria – the sponsor of the Human Rights Council minorities mandate – emphasized that the ban on discrimination was at the centre of the protection of minorities. Discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion and language is prohibited in both Covenants and other provisions of international law, and yet patterns of discrimination on these grounds persist to this day, with members of minorities frequently being the victims. As such, ensuring the equal enjoyment of human rights by minorities necessitates effective protection from discrimination. The majority of discrimination questions faced by minorities will be no different to those concerning discrimination on any other ground. For example, in cases of direct discrimination in which an employer does not hire persons on grounds of their ethnicities or religions, the legal steps, considerations or issues in those cases are unlikely to be different from those in cases concerning discrimination on grounds of sex, sexual orientation or any other protected grounds. Thus, many applications of anti-discrimination law to the protection of minorities have arisen in connection with cases of discrimination in access to employment, education, health care, goods and services, and other areas of life regulated by law, in cases that mirror those brought on other grounds. As such, the legacy globally of more than a century of litigating cases challenging discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity has resulted in an extensive body of jurisprudence, which is beyond the scope of the present guide to summarize, but which has played out primarily in sectors such as education, employment, health care, housing, social assistance and social security; access to services available to the public, including public transport, taxi services, restaurants, clubs, discotheques, museums, libraries and swimming pools; political rights, such as the right to vote and stand for public office; and the ban on discrimination in the justice system, including as concerns the actions of police and other security services, as well as the requirement to investigate effectively and uncover bias and animus in crime. In effect, anti-discrimination law as implemented in this area for the most part follows broadly the contours of the rights set out at article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, as detailed in the sections above. That said, as the Human Rights Committee has set out, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights distinguishes the minority rights protections guaranteed by article 27 from the guarantees of non-discrimination and equal protection provided by articles 2 (1) and 26 of the Covenant.849 Article 27 provides that: In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language. As the Human Rights Committee notes: “The terms used in article 27 indicate that the persons designed to be protected are those who belong to a group and who share in common a culture, a religion and/or a language.”850 While all persons are entitled to non-discrimination, the right established under article 27 “is distinct from, and additional to”851 this right and indeed all other rights. Article 27 creates specific rights of communal practice that complement, but are discrete from, the rights under articles 2 (1) and 26. 124 847 For instance, in its general comment No. 21 (2009), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights addresses the particular rights of minorities to cultural life, which should be afforded to all on a non-discriminatory basis. See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 21 (2009), paras. 21–24 and 32–33. See also CEDAW/C/DNK/CO/8, para. 34; CERD/C/ISR/CO/17-19, para. 35; CRPD/C/NOR/CO/1, para. 7; CAT/C/SWE/CO/6-7, para. 15; CRC/C/AUT/CO/5-6, para. 17; and CMW/C/LBY/CO/1, para. 29. 848 In particular – although not exclusively – based on the provisions of the Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100), the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) and the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122). See General Assembly resolution 74/165. See also ILO, “ILO normative work concerning ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities”, on file with OHCHR. 849 Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 23 (1994), para. 4. 850 Ibid., para. 5.1. 851 Ibid., para. 1.