Promoting Non-discrimination in Public Administration: Some Entry Points

Discrimination, or unjust differential treatment on the basis of, for example, sex, race or ethnicity, age, income or wealth, disability, caste, sexual orientation, religion, or migrant status, causes harm and drives exclusion in social, economic, political and cultural life. Where it occurs in the delivery of public services, it further undermines public trust and confidence in public institutions. In recent years, growing evidence of discrimination has brought the issue to the forefront of many societies and provoked both individual and collective reflection. Although the principles of equality and non-discrimination are widely entrenched, discrimination affects public administration as it does society in general. There is no comparable data across countries that fully sheds light on the level and extent of discrimination by public administration. This may be due to factors such as the difficulties of measuring discrimination, under-reporting of incidents of discrimination and the limited public availability of such reporting, and how broadly non-discrimination is approached (for instance, which groups are protected and to what extent). A limited amount of information is available for some countries and country groupings (mainly developed countries), and some social groups.