Background

Combating poverty is a key undertaking of the European Union in the field of economic and social rights. This is reflected not only in the European Pillar of Social Rights, but also in fighting poverty and social exclusion being one of the five targets of Europe 2020, the EU’s ten-year jobs and growth strategy. Further to this, one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Equinet’s earlier work on ‘Addressing Poverty and Discrimination: Two Sides of the One Coin’ and ‘Equality Bodies Contributing to the Protection, Respect and Fulfilment of Economic and Social Rights’ demonstrates, based on the experiences of equality bodies, the inextricable link between discrimination and poverty. Most equality bodies have a broad mandate covering discrimination not only in the field of employment but also in fields such as housing, access to education, healthcare and other services where a number of grounds intersect with socio-economic status as a cause of social exclusion. Important intersections include the grounds of race and gender.

There is growing recognition that socio-economic status as a ground of discrimination is an important tool to tackle inequality. Recent years have seen legislative initiatives in a number of European jurisdictions where the anti-discrimination legislation did not historically recognize socio-economic status as a discrimination ground, including France and Ireland.

Objectives

This conference aimed to:

• Review the mutually reinforcing links between poverty and discrimination.
• Take stock of recent initiatives introducing socio-economic status as a discrimination ground.
• Explore the manner in which grounds such as race and gender intersect with poverty to result in aggravated forms of social exclusion.
• Discuss what can be done at EU and national levels to break the vicious cycle of social exclusion.

Agenda

Agenda

Speakers’ Presentations & Documents

OPENING SESSION

• Tena Šimonović Einwalter, Chair of the Equinet Executive Board and Deputy Ombudswoman of Croatia
• Emily Logan, Chief Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC)
• Keynote Address - Ireland: toward a new discrimination ground?- David Stanton, Irish Minister of State for Justice
• Video Address - Social condition and access to rights - Philippe-André Tessier, Interim President of the Québec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission. Watch video here.

SESSION 1 - Poverty and discrimination: a vicious cycle?

Chair: Tena Šimonović Einwalter, Chair of the Equinet Executive Board and Deputy Ombudswoman of Croatia

• Ending poverty. Meeting the SDGs - Birgit Van Hout, Regional Representative for Europe, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR)
• Breaking the vicious circle of discrimination and poverty: The case of Roma - Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos, Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA)
• European Social Charter - Jarna Petman, former member of the European Committee of Social Rights
• Ireland: making rights a reality for persons in poverty - Laurence Bond, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC)

SESSION 2: Socio-economic status: a ground for discrimination?

Chair: Anne Gaspard, Equinet Executive Director

• Toward protection from discrimination on the ground of socio-economic status - Niall Crowley, Equality and Rights Alliance
• Poverty as a discrimination ground, a French perspective - Sophie Latraverse, Defender of Rights, France
• Different approaches in working with poverty and discrimination - Henk van Hootegem, Service to Combat Poverty and Emmanuelle Devillé, UNIA, Belgium
• Crucial intersection: poverty and other grounds of discrimination - Adél Lukovics, Equal Treatment Authority, Hungary

SESSION 3: Panel debate on Ways Forward

Chair: Tamás Kádár, Equinet Head of Legal and Policy

• Laurence Bond, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC)
• Birgit Van Hout, Regional Representative for Europe, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR)
• Robert Anderson, Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions)
• Jarna Petman, former member of the European Committee of Social Rights

Photos

Conference on Poverty & Discrimination: Two sides of the same coin, 22 March, Dublin

Further Information

EN - Addressing Poverty and Discrimination: Two Sides of the One Coin (PDF, 378 KB)

Contributing to the protection, respect and fulfillment of Economic and Social Rights (2015)

You may also be interested in reading An analysis of the introduction socio-economic status as a discrimination ground, concentrating on including socioeconomic status as a ground for discrimination in Irish employment equality and equal status legislation.