Indirect discrimination violates human rights

Sep 28, 2000
Aleksei Gynter

The term "indirect discrimination" refers to administrative or social activity which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity or treatment.

The project is now at the planning stage, and will last from one to three years. The most probable sources of funding are the Phare Foundation and the European Union.

LICHR is a public non-profit organization established by private individuals in 1994. Its basic activities are provision of free legal advice, and collection, analysis and dissemination of information on human rights.

Aleksei Semjonov, the center's director, said indirect discrimination is now becoming a serious problem. "The Estonian Human Development Report produced by the United Nations Development Program in 1999 contains a chart showing levels of employment in Estonia for the last 10 years," he said.

The chart shows that the number of non-Estonians having prestigious and highly-paid jobs has decreased since the restoration of independence while the proportion of unemployed Russians has grown. These facts attracted the attention of the center's legal advisers and prompted them to create a special survey.

Labor issues are the most common and, hence, important part of indirect discrimination. An example of it, according to Semjonov, is the numerous cases of dismissal of qualified personnel in different fields, such as medical service, Estonian Railroad, Estonian Air, etc. "It was rather suspicious that the administration mostly replaced experienced staff members with Russian names by young newcomers with Estonian names," said Semjonov.

There is no mechanism enforcing legal penalties for discrimination. "This legal vacuum should be filled," said Semjonov.

The problem is common to all three Baltic states, he said. But the situation in Lithuania is better than in Estonia and Latvia.

The weakness of the system for preventing discrimination in Estonia was illustrated by the experiences of an Afro-American female student studying at Tartu University who received numerous threats from local skinheads, Semjonov said. The police said they could do nothing until the student actually got beaten up.

"And what about the hate speech in the comments section of the Delfi Internet portal?" asked Semjonov. "If such things happened in the United States, the editors would be taken to court."

Yet officials take a different view of discrimination and back their words with figures. The Estonian Labor Disputes Commission says there have been no applications related to discrimination since it was established in 1996.

Tea Rohtla, director of the commission, said neither employees nor employers had mentioned discrimination in applications to the commission. But people could refer to different Estonian and international legal acts concerning discrimination, if their labor dispute reached court, she said.

Discrimination is forbidden under the Estonian constitution, said the Justice Ministry. If a person has Estonian citizenship, residency and a work permit, it should be easy for him or her to find a job in any sphere including public service, the ministry said.

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