Inclusion and anti-discrimination programmes

The Council of Europe's Inclusion and Anti-discrimination Programmes Division carries out activities to ensure genuine equality and full access to rights and opportunities for all members of society.

The Division is composed of four Units, offering concrete and tested solutions to governmental and non-governmental partners in member States to strenghten inclusion and address discrimination and inequality that undermine the enjoyment of human rights and democracy by everyone:

• Intercultural Inclusion Unit

• Anti-discrimination Cooperation Unit

• Hate Speech, Hate Crime and Artificial Intelligence Unit

• Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression and Sex Caracteristics (SOGIESC) Unit

 These activities are directly based on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the recommendations and findings of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (AC/FCNM), and the Committee of Experts of the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages, as well as relevant Committee of Ministers Recommendations.

 The approach of this work is to establish a direct link between standards, the monitoring processes, the intergovernmental work, such as the Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI) and the implementation of co-operation activities. This allows to identify weaknesses in the implementation of standards where technical cooperation activities can be helpful.

 The Council of Europe works closely with the existing networks of equality bodies and national human rights structures (ombudsmen and national human rights institutions); other Council of Europe monitoring bodies (such as European Committee of Social Rights, the Group of experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) and their secretariats; European networks of NGO’s and national civil society platforms; and international actors, such as the EU Commission and its Agencies (including the Fundamental Rights Agency), the UN agencies (such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Development Programme) and the OSCE/ODIHR.