Overview/Background
The Equal Rights Trust was established in 2007, with a mission to combat discrimination and promote equality as a fundamental human right and a principle of social justice. We were founded to pursue and promote the right to equality as a right to participate in all areas of life on an equal basis, which requires taking a holistic, comprehensive approach to different inequalities. Since our foundation, this approach has provided the conceptual basis for all our work, which focuses on how to achieve equality through the enactment and implementation of equality laws.

In 2008, we launched the Declaration of Principles on Equality, together with 128 experts from more than 40 different countries. The Declaration brings together the best of law and best practice from the UN and around the world at that time. It sets out standards for achieving equality and underlines that states must enact and implement comprehensive anti-discrimination laws.

In our first few years, we focused on research and conceptual initiatives examining the content and application of the right to equality and we also launched our first country project in 2009, supporting partners in Kenya and India. As of 2018, we have established projects and partnerships in more than 45 countries ranging from Azerbaijan to Zambia. Through these projects we have supported civil society movements to combat discrimination through reform and implementation of equality law.

We have also examined the intersection of equality and other issues of human rights and social justice. This has included work on issues ranging from the link between discrimination and statelessness to the use of equality law approaches to advance economic and social rights and to the issue of discriminatory torture and ill-treatment. In addition, we have supported the development of expert thinking on the right to equality itself, including by publishing a bi-annual journal, the Equal Rights Review.