It is widely agreed that victims of discrimination on traditional status grounds such as gender and race are overrepresented among the poor and undereducated. People living in poverty also face discrimination because of their socioeconomic situation. Many national, European and international antidiscrimination provisions prohibit discrimination on grounds that are related to a person’s socioeconomic situation. It is striking, however, that this is hardly applied in practice. On the basis of domestic—Belgian, French and British—and European material, this paper argues that the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of social condition is an empowering legal tool in the protection of disadvantaged people, especially regarding issues of misrecognition. Four reasons for this are considered: the determining role of the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of social condition in applying a direct scrutiny of the socioeconomic underprivileged situation of the applicants, its role in combating stereotypes and stigma against poor people, its important cross-cutting function in cases of multiple discrimination, and its exclusive applicability in some occurrences of discrimination.

This article examines the dual responsibility of state authorities to repair past abuses and guarantee economic and social rights after episodes of widespread violence according to the jurisprudence of African human rights bodies. Two alternative frameworks underlying the practice of African bodies and human rights law more broadly are discussed. The first portrays the state as a threat to the individual, responsible for redressing the consequences of violations in breach of duties to respect and protect rights. The second understands the state as an active guarantor of rights in the aftermath of widespread abuses, responsible for improving the well-being of people affected and not affected by violence. In light of the possibilities and limitations that arise from both approaches in the African context, the article advocates the second.

In Handyside v. The United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held that the right to freedom of expression, as provided for in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects not only expressions that are favorably received but also those that ‘offend, shock or disturb’. 1¹ Yet, the Court has since developed a substantial body of inconsistent case-law allowing restrictions on ‘hate speech’ that severely questions the degree to which offensive, shocking and disturbing speech is truly protected by the ECHR. Against a qualitative and quantitative backdrop, the authors argue that the Court and previously the Commission, have adopted an overly restrictive approach to hate speech, which fails to provide adequate protection to political speech on controversial issues, including criticism of public officials and government institutions and has created an inconsistent and even arbitrary body of case law. Instead, jurisdictions that recognize a need to balance the freedom of expression with limits on hate speech have adopted more convincing approaches of hate speech, providing a robust protection of free speech while leaving room for the State to curtail the most extreme forms of non-violent hate speech.

While anti-abortion activists have been successful in pushing to restrict access to abortion across the USA, reproductive rights activists have been mobilizing across Latin America to push for the easement of strict anti-abortion policies. These opposing directions of travel have renewed interest in which human rights arguments would best support the expansion of access to abortion in Latin America. To date, progress in this area has mostly relied on understanding that the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment requires states to allow abortions in the direst of circumstances. However, the vast majority of women in the region who seek abortions do not qualify for the small exemptions contained in the law. Activists looking to expand abortion provisions beyond the cruelty paradigm therefore need to find arguments that can stand firm in a generally conservative Latin American region. In this search, the Inter-American System could, somewhat surprisingly, provide keys to constructing a new discourse surrounding reproductive rights based on a nuanced understanding of structural discrimination and a willingness to visibilise the suffering of women.