International Equality Law

All of the core treaties explicitly embrace and centralise the value of and right to ‘equality’ in their text. Two of the nine core human rights treaties have the word ‘discrimination’ in their title. Equality and non-discrimination are omnipresent and, arguably, omnipotent in international human rights law. But what are they and how do we discern their meaning, interpretation, application and significance in international human rights law? This course seeks to answer this question by conceiving the field of ‘international equality law’. Across twelve seminars, this course aims to provide a framework for understanding the field as a semi-autonomous field with its own point or purpose, and its own governing principles. The course is aimed at understanding this point and purpose and set of governing principles both independently and within the parent field of international human rights law. Doctrinally, the focus will be on the following treaties, namely, and chronologically: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). There will also be references made to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The focus will not be on the specific rights provisions within these treaties but will be on isolating the work equality and non-discrimination do within them and their relation to the human rights contained in these treaties. Importantly, the course relies on both legal and non-legal literature to make sense of the field, especially materials in political theory and philosophy. The course ultimately provides a justification for the field of international equality law as being the binding force which brings much of international human rights law together as a whole and without which international human rights law may lack justification of its own.

Tutor: Dr Atrey