Tackling discrimination based on social origin
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly
debate on 26 April 2022 (12th sitting) (see Doc. 15499, report of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination,
rapporteur: Ms Selin Sayek Böke). Text
adopted by the Assembly on 26 April 2022 (12th sitting).
1. Social origin means the social
or class milieu into which a person is born and that shapes their
formative years: their origins, upbringing or starting point in
life. A person’s social origin can determine attributes ranging from
their accent to self-perception, or the existence of personal or
professional networks, which can affect their prospects in many
spheres and persist throughout their life.
2. Social origin must not be confused with socio-economic status,
which refers to a person’s current situation as regards wealth,
property, housing, level of education and other similar characteristics
and which may change over the course of a person’s life. Social
origin and socio-economic status may coincide, notably where there
is little social mobility in a given society, but the two notions
are distinct.
3. No one’s outcomes in life should be determined by their birth,
let alone conditions prior to their birth. Yet there is broad evidence
that across Europe, a person’s social origin, including their conditions
at birth and upbringing, plays a strong role in determining their
future. The chances that those who start life in less prosperous
conditions will complete secondary or higher education, earn the
same salary as persons from a more advantaged background, own their
own home, avoid poverty or have a high standard of health are significantly
lower than for those who start life in wealthier circumstances.
4. Discrimination based on social origin increases the persistence
of poverty and social exclusion and deprives those affected of prospects
for development and self-fulfilment, in turn affecting overall economic development.
By threatening social cohesion and engagement, it can also place
democracy at risk.
5. Such discrimination may be direct, leading to class floors
that protect individuals from more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds
from downward social mobility and class ceilings that hinder the
upward social mobility of individuals from less advantaged socio-economic
backgrounds. The class ceilings may also arise from hidden causes,
mainly from ingrained perceptions and stereotyping based on social
origin and social status which affect how individuals are perceived
and treated by others.
6. Discrimination based on social origin also results in class
pay gaps even after adjusting for educational attainment. Factors
such as parental means, misrecognition of merit and informal sponsorship
based on pre-existing networks or cultural affinities contribute
to the existence of a class pay gap that persists throughout people’s
lives, even where they have identical levels of educational attainment.
The use of artificial intelligence can also aggravate discrimination
in this field. Furthermore, discrimination based on social origin
may manifest itself as a lack of social mobility, necessitating
a broader and holistic perspective in policy design.
7. Discrimination based on social origin has been expressly prohibited
in international law since the adoption of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights in 1948. This prohibition has been included in numerous international
and European human rights instruments since then, including the
European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 5), Protocol No. 12
to the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 177) and the
European Social Charter (revised) (ETS No. 163), as well as the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention
on the Rights of the Child.
8. All Council of Europe member States are thus parties to treaties
that expressly prohibit discrimination based on social origin. However,
few European States include social origin among the protected grounds
in their constitutional or legislative anti-discrimination provisions.
As a result, individual remedies for discrimination based on social
origin are difficult to access, as the dearth of case law in this
field demonstrates. In addition, few member States collect reliable
and comprehensive data in this field, possibly due to difficulties in
measurement.
9. To tackle discrimination based on social origin effectively,
it must first and foremost be clearly prohibited by legislation
that also provides genuine remedies to individual victims of such
discrimination. Intersectional perspectives must also be taken into
account, ensuring that interactions between grounds such as gender
or ethnic origin, on the one hand, and social origin, on the other,
are identified and can be targeted. To avoid continually reproducing
discrimination based on social origin, effective legislation must,
moreover, exist in tandem with holistic measures designed to ensure
merit-based mechanisms, to promote social mobility and social justice,
creating societies that are fairer for all.
10. Regarding discrimination based on socio-economic status, which
is a related but distinct issue that must also be tackled, the Parliamentary
Assembly recalls its
Resolution
2393 (2021) “Socio-economic inequalities in Europe: time
to restore social trust by strengthening social rights”, in which
it noted that, despite growing overall prosperity in Europe, disparities
in all economic and social dimensions have widened, with a parallel slowdown
in social mobility, negatively affecting individuals and communities
while also restraining overall economic development, undermining
social justice and hurting the functioning of our society.
11. The Assembly also recalls its
Recommendation 2205 (2021) and
Resolution 2384 (2021) “Overcoming the
socio-economic crisis sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic”, in which
it called on member States to take action to overcome the negative
current and longer-term impact on social rights of the Covid-19
pandemic, and its
Resolution
2343 (2020) “Preventing discrimination caused by the
use of artificial intelligence”, in which it called on States to
put in place strong safeguards in order to ensure that the use of
artificial intelligence does not result in violations of the principles
of equality and non-discrimination, including on the ground of social origin.
12. In the light of these considerations, the Assembly calls on
Council of Europe member States, as regards anti-discrimination
law and public governance, to:
12.1 expressly
prohibit discrimination based on real or perceived social origin
in anti-discrimination legislation at all levels of the domestic
legal system, where it is not already covered by existing grounds of
discrimination, and ensure that social origin is defined and interpreted
in an evolutive manner, not limited to questions of belonging or
not belonging to nobility but including all class backgrounds;
12.2 also expressly prohibit discrimination based on real or
perceived socio-economic status in anti-discrimination legislation
at all levels of the domestic legal system, where it is not already
covered by existing grounds of discrimination, and ensure that the
terms used in legislation are adequate to cover all necessary situations
in the country concerned, and are regularly reviewed to keep pace
with changes in society;
12.3 ensure that effective and accessible individual remedies
are available for these forms of discrimination;
12.4 mainstream anti-discrimination measures in all legislation;
12.5 ensure that national equality bodies are competent to
deal with discrimination on these grounds both in individual cases
and in broader matters such as data collection and situation testing,
and that they have the necessary human and financial resources to
carry out these tasks;
12.6 run training courses to help civil servants working in
this field to recognise and better tackle this form of discrimination;
12.7 consider making the public sector subject to an equality
duty in this field, requiring all authorities exercising public
powers to do so having due regard to the need to exercise them with
the aim of reducing inequalities of outcome resulting from disadvantage
based on social origin or socio-economic status;
12.8 provide training to judges, prosecutors and other persons
exercising public powers to raise their awareness of the impact
of discrimination based on social origin and socio-economic status
and enable them to identify such discrimination, whether it occurs
based on these grounds alone or in situations of multiple or intersectional
discrimination, and tackle it accordingly;
12.9 compile data on social origin, including from an intersectional
perspective, with due respect for the principles of confidentiality,
informed consent and voluntary self-identification and avoiding stigmatisation
of persons who are already victims of discrimination based on social
origin;
12.10 require both public and private companies to publish class
pay gap data;
12.11 initiate public debate on how merit is defined and how
institutions, especially those related to education and the labour
market, should respond to a drive towards a merit-based system;
12.12 review the bases on which talent and merit are measured
in public-sector occupations, so as to ensure that the criteria
used in recruitment, assessment and promotion procedures place value
on the competences needed to do a job well, and encourage private-sector
employers to do likewise.
14. Bearing in mind that discrimination based on social origin
occurs during early childhood and throughout all stages of education
and all stages of participation in the labour market, the Assembly
also invites member States to:
14.1 ensure
free, equitable and accessible public provision of early education
and childcare services;
14.2 implement policies to publicly provide free, equitable
and quality education to all, regardless of social origin and throughout
each individual’s life;
14.3 design redistributive fiscal policies that will enable
the cycle of material deprivation inhibiting social mobility to
be broken;
14.4 design fiscal spending programmes to provide social safety
nets and equality in initial financial support to ensure equal opportunities
for all in terms of taking risks when building careers, both when entering
the labour market and when transitioning between jobs;
14.5 implement reskilling, upskilling and lifelong learning
schemes to eliminate friction in job transition;
14.6 formalise recruitment, assessment and promotion procedures
and make them transparent;
14.7 implement positive action mechanisms such as fast-track
graduate recruitment schemes that can promote the recruitment of
persons from disadvantaged social backgrounds in careers where they
are currently under-represented;
14.8 take measures to encourage employers to ensure that all
internships are duly advertised and remunerated, and consider banning
unpaid internships;
14.9 undertake awareness-raising campaigns to tackle the under-reporting
by victims of discrimination on the grounds of socio-economic status;
14.10 encourage the private sector to design and run training
courses aimed at raising awareness of and eliminating unconscious
bias;
14.11 promote the creation of professional support networks
designed to counterbalance and avoid the hidden injuries experienced
by many persons on an upwardly mobile social trajectory;
14.12 review residential, zoning and housing policies to overcome
residential segregation and ensure affordable housing for all, and
design in situ urban and rural
transformation projects to enhance community interaction in residential
areas that include people from all social backgrounds;
14.13 implement the European Social Charter.
