E/C.12/GC/20
page 9
accommodation based on disability which has the effect of nullifying or impairing the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise of economic, social or cultural rights”.18 The denial of
reasonable accommodation should be included in national legislation as a prohibited form of
discrimination on the basis of disability.19 States parties should address discrimination, such as
prohibitions on the right to education, and denial of reasonable accommodation in public places
such as public health facilities and the workplace,20 as well as in private places, e.g. as long as
spaces are designed and built in ways that make them inaccessible to wheelchairs, such users
will be effectively denied their right to work.
Age
29. Age is a prohibited ground of discrimination in several contexts. The Committee has
highlighted the need to address discrimination against unemployed older persons in finding
work, or accessing professional training or retraining, and against older persons living in poverty
with unequal access to universal old-age pensions due to their place of residence.21 In relation to
young persons, unequal access by adolescents to sexual and reproductive health information and
services amounts to discrimination.
Nationality
30. The ground of nationality should not bar access to Covenant rights,22 e.g. all children
within a State, including those with an undocumented status, have a right to receive education
and access to adequate food and affordable health care. The Covenant rights apply to everyone
including non-nationals, such as refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless persons, migrant workers
and victims of international trafficking, regardless of legal status and documentation.23
18
See CESCR general comment No. 5, para. 15.
19
See CRPD, art. 2: “‘Reasonable accommodation’ means necessary and appropriate
modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in
a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal
basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
20
See CESCR general comment No. 5, para. 22.
21
See, further, CESCR general comment No. 6.
22
This paragraph is without prejudice to the application of art. 2, para. 3, of the Covenant,
which states: “Developing countries, with due regard to human rights and their national
economy, may determine to what extent they would guarantee the economic rights recognized in
the present Covenant to non-nationals.”
23
See also general comment No. 30 (2004) of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination on non-citizens.