Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. That said there is a growing body of evidence that human rights-based approaches, and these key guarantees in particular, can lead to more sustainable and inclusive development results.[i]
Discrimination can both cause poverty and be a hurdle in alleviating poverty. Even in countries where there have been significant gains toward achieving the MDGs, inequalities have grown. The MDGs have supported aggregate progress—often without acknowledging the importance of investing in the most marginalized and excluded, or giving due credit to governments and institutions which do ensure that development benefits these populations. Recognition of this shortcoming in the MDGs has brought an increasing awareness of the importance of working to reverse growing economic inequalities through the post-2015 framework, and a key element of this must be actively working to dismantle discrimination.[ii]
The post-2015 framework should be grounded in afundamental guarantee of equality and non-discrimination. Under international law, this requires states to identify and eliminate discrimination and ensure equality. This may require legislative or administrative reform to repeal discriminatory provisions or address discriminatory practices by the government or private actors, a change in resource allocation, or educational measures. The post-2015 frameworkshould embody the responsibility of states, when acting together or alone, to take proactive measures to identify and address entrenched discrimination, both direct and indirect. Itshould embody the responsibility of states, international institutions, and corporations to avoid and remedy discrimination for which they are directly or indirectly responsible. The framework should go some way toward achieving this by including goals, targets, and indicators directed at reducing discrimination and ensuring that the social and economic needs of the most marginalized communities are being addressed fairly, and at reducing wealth inequalities more broadly. Targets and indicators in the post-2015 framework should be designed to reduce existing inequalities, address entrenched discrimination, and realize the social and economic rights of the most in need while also remaining feasible, affordable, and implementable.
The post-2015 framework should emphasize the importance of development reaching the most marginalized populations, including indigenous peoples. It can go some way toward achieving this by including:
A specific target of addressing the social and economic needs of the most marginalized or discriminated against groups in each country. The framework should establish the methodology for identifying marginalized or disadvantaged groups, but the groups identified would vary country to country.
Indicators should look to identify structural discrimination, including consideration of discriminatory laws and discrimination by private actors. Considerations should include whether governments have non-discrimination laws that bind public and private entities (with a definition of discrimination consistent with international human rights law), require public and private institutions to develop non-discrimination action plans, and fully implement such laws and policies.
Indicators should measure realization of urgent social and economic needs of the most marginalized populations.
Indicators should measure respect of indigenous peoples’ rights, including land and cultural rights, and recognize free, prior, and informed consent.
Indicators which measure the achievement of each target for the most marginalized or discriminated against groups in each country.
In order to achieve this, disaggregated data will be essential. It may not be feasible to disaggregate date by all potential grounds of discrimination.[iii]At a minimum, states and international institutions should collect disaggregate by gender, demographic group (i.e. ethnic background, language, religion), locale (rural/urban/slum household, state/territory), age, and disability.[iv]States and international institutions should also analyze all existing disaggregated data.
The post-2015 framework should emphasize the importance of development reaching the poorest. It can go some way toward achieving this by including:
A specific target of addressing the social and economic needs of the poorest two wealth quintiles in each country.
Indicators which measure the achievement of each target by wealth quintiles. This will require the collection of data along wealth quintiles.
Explanation:
