Differential treatment may be permissible if its objective is to overcome past discrimination or address persisting inequalities. In fact, international human rights law provides for the adoption of special measures in favour of certain persons or groups for the purpose of eliminating discrimination and achieving full equality, not only in law but also in practice. Several legal instruments envisage this. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination permits the implementation of special measures “for the sole purpose of securing adequate advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups or individuals requiring such protection as may be necessary in order to ensure such groups or individuals equal enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms”.5 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women allows for “temporary special measures” which accelerate de facto equality between men and women.6 The Human Rights Committee, in its general comment No. 18 (1989) on non-discrimination, held that States parties are sometimes required to “take affirmative action in order to diminish or eliminate conditions which cause or help to perpetuate discrimination prohibited by the Covenant” and that “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… as long as such action is needed to correct discrimination in fact”. In its general recommendation No. 32 (2009), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination provided further guidance on the scope of the principle of non-discrimination under article 1 (1) of the Convention and, more importantly, the meaning of “special measures”. The Committee specified that “the list of human rights to which the principle applies under the Convention is not closed and extends to any field of human rights regulated by the public authorities in the State party […] to address racial discrimination ‘by any persons, group or organization’.”7 Regarding “special measures” to advance equality, the Committee asserted that the term also includes measures that in some countries may be described as “affirmative measures”, “affirmative action” or “positive action”, whereas the term “positive discrimination” is, in the context of international human rights standards, a contradictio in terminis and should be avoided. “Measures” includes the full span of legislative, executive, administrative, budgetary and regulatory instruments, at every level in the State apparatus, as well as plans, policies, programmes and preferential regimes in areas such as employment, housing, education, culture, and participation in public life for disfavoured groups, devised and implemented 5 Art. 1, para. 4. See also art. 2, para. 2. 6 Art. 4, para. 1. 7 See also art. 2 (1) (d) and (b). 9