The EU’s equal opportunities policy prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation and age. The Directives prohibit direct and indirect discrimination as well as harassment. The Court of Justice has played an important role in shaping quality law. Drawing on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, it has indicated that non-discrimination is a general principle of EU Law, but the precise effect of this over and above the degree of protection offered by the equality Directives is not clear. Moreover, the Court is called upon to shape the scope of equality law and balance the prohibition against discrimination with other legitimate policies. Beyond conferring rights to workers, the EU has extended gender and race discrimination to other spheres, like the provision of services and education. Efforts to develop a policy of substantive equality have led to mixed results: positive discrimination is allowed only in limited circumstances, there are significant differences in the capacity of national equality bodies to offer support to victims of discrimination and mainstreaming equality in EU Law has been patchy.

This chapter discusses the right to equality and non-discrimination as it is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, other Council of Europe instruments, in EU law and in international instruments. Attention is paid to various non-discrimination concepts, such as indirect and direct discrimination, and to grounds of discrimination. In the final section, a short comparison between the different instruments is made.

Proportionality has been a recurrent method of adjudication in the Inter-American Human Rights System in different types of cases – mainly, in cases of limitations of human rights and in cases of equality and nondiscrimination. This chapter focuses on the use of proportionality by the Inter-American Court in the second group of cases. First, the chapter addresses the complexity of equality and nondiscrimination positive provisions, with specific emphasis on the formulas employed by the American Convention on Human Rights. Second, it discusses the type of cases in which proportionality is useful and serves its purpose of narrowing discretion in the adjudication of equality and nondiscrimination provisions, which are those involving direct discrimination. It also presents reasons to be skeptical about the usefulness and appropriateness of proportionality in the adjudication of other types of cases, specifically those dealing with covert and indirect discrimination. The analysis also discusses the potential use of proportionality in other cases related to the substantive dimension of equality and nondiscrimination.