Your right to recognition and equality before law.

This right is based on Articles 16 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Subsection 1 recognizes that humanity means that every individual has a legal personality. It means that everyone has legal ability, for examples, to enter into transactions to buy and sell, to operate a bank account, and to access government services. It can be limited by laws that protect people who do not have capacity due to a mental condition or being a minor. Subsection 2 ensures that the human rights in the Act are enjoyed by everyone without discrimination. Subsection 3 is known as the right to equality. It ensures that all laws and policies are applied equally, and do not have a discriminatory effect. Public entities, as well courts and tribunals, are required to treat all people equally when applying the law. It also requires that the laws themselves provide equal protection for everyone. Sometimes it will be necessary for certain groups to be treated differently in order to have equal protection of the law. This is know as substantive equality. Subsection 4 provides a right to equal and effective protection against discrimination. It gives people a separate and positive right to be effectively protected against discrimination. Subsection 5 makes it clear that where measures are taken to assist people who have been disadvantaged because of discrimination, the measures are not taken to be discrimination. The purpose is to achieve substantive equality. This is known as the special measures provision, and is consistent with the exemption for welfare measures in section 104 of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991.

These rights have been considered by Queensland tribunals on applications for exemptions from the operation of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991, and by the Victorian tribunal in similar applications for exemptions from the operation of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act. I chose to deal with this Human Right because from my point of view every person has the right to enjoy the persons’s human rights without discrimination.