Conference: Rising Socio-Economic Inequalities

23 October 2025

On 3 October 2025, the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism (GCDC) at UCL Laws supported the inaugural conference of the Socio-Economic Inequalities and Poverty Discrimination Working Group (SEIPD). The conference, which was held at the UCL Faculty of Laws, was titled ‘Rising Socio-Economic Inequalities: The Potential and Limits of Law’.

Opening the conference, the conveners of the working group – Stefania Fiorella Rainaldi Redon, Edward Pérez, Michael Marcondes Smith, and Tainá Garcia Maia – explained the aims behind the group. It was established to provide a platform to exchange knowledge and share resources on inequality and discrimination, incorporating views from diverse disciplines and jurisdictions. 

GCDC Director Erin Delaney (UCL Laws) remarked that discussions on rising socioeconomic inequalities contain macro and micro components. The macro question relates to how socioeconomic inequalities are instrumentalised in politics and used to support populism, which is increasingly prevalent in today’s world. However, the micro issue of marginalised groups lacking adequate representation has long pre-existed the current political moment. She highlighted the importance of scholarship on these issues, which raise questions about our democracies, and expressed hope that this would be the start of a continued relationship between the GCDC and the SEIPD.

Following the opening remarks, the first panel began, with a paper from Michael Marcondes Smith (University of Antwerp). In ‘The (Limited) Redistributive Power of Discrimination Law: The Role of Socio-Economic Grounds of Discrimination’, Smith argued that discrimination law is limited in its potential to effect socioeconomic redistribution. He suggested, however, that there is potential in conceptualising socioeconomic grounds of discrimination to address the particular form of disadvantage that arises from these inequalities.

Sarah Ganty (Yale/UCLouvain) presented her paper ‘On the Existential Tension Between Merit and Antidiscrimination Law’. In the paper, Ganty explored the notion of merit in US antidiscrimination law as it plays out in three domains: education, access to goods and services, and voting rights. Ultimately, she suggested that merit is not compatible with the foundations of antidiscrimination law and gave proposals for reimagining merit and its role in antidiscrimination law.

Gideon Basson (University of Oxford) presented on ‘The Limits of Economic Grounds of Discrimination in International Human Rights Law’, explaining the traditional vertical-horizontal dichotomy whereby economic grounds address vertical inequality between individuals while other grounds address horizontal inequality between groups. Basson argued that this distinction is unhelpful as it tells us little about what makes people poor or rich but rather falls prey to ‘technologies of quantification’ reflected in capitalist indices that measure growth and investment.

In the final presentation of the panel, Rawletta Barrow (University of Oxford) discussed ‘Disrupting Meritocratic Ideology in Educational Decision-Making: A Rights-Based and Decolonial Examination of Merit-Based School Segregation in Guyana’. In the paper, she challenged the policy of merit-based school segregation in Guyana, which sees children separated into different schools based on their performance in standardised tests completed at age 10 or 11. She argued that the colonial logic that guided the evolution of the educational system remains embedded, and a true ideological shift is needed – one that reimagines the aims of education from a decolonial, rights-based perspective.

The second panel of the day opened with Tainá Garcia Maia’s (CHREN) presentation on ‘Inequality and Poverty in Brazil: A Judicial Response to a Socio-Political Challenge’, drawn from her forthcoming book. In the book, she examines how courts have responded to poverty in Brazil, focusing on the practice of the Brazilian Supreme Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In so doing, she explores the interplay between poverty and inequality, and uncovers the potential and limits of the law in promoting transformative social change, including poverty alleviation.

Ishita Sharma (Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law) then discussed her paper ‘Constitutional Equality and the Limits of Legal Intervention in Socio-Economic Inequality: A Comparative Analysis of India and the United Kingdom’. She pointed out that while India’s Constitution has equality provisions, it does not recognise poverty as a protected characteristic. Additionally, India has no statutory framework to give effect to the equality provisions in the Constitution, making rights enforcement dependent on the conflicting and fluctuating opinions of judges. Ultimately, she argued for a statutory framework to implement the equality provisions in India’s Constitution, similar to the Equality Act 2010 in the UK.

Ian Browne (UCL Laws) presented on ‘From Dead Letter to the Courtroom: Assessing the Impact of the Socioeconomic Duty in Scotland, Wales and, Perhaps, England’. He analysed litigation on the public sector duty regarding socioeconomic inequalities, as contained in section 1 of the Equality Act. He found a low rate of litigation relating to this duty, with only three cases in publicly available records. Further, he argued, these cases do little to increase our understanding of this duty, offering no leverage to campaigners seeking to challenge public authority decisions on this basis.

Justin Winchester (University of Oxford) presented his paper on ‘Recognition versus Redistribution? Positive Equality Duties in Conflict in the United Kingdom’, in which he discussed how the socioeconomic duty (section 1, Equality Act) and the public sector equality duty (section 149, Equality Act) can sometimes come into conflict. He invited reflection on whether equality law in the UK is primarily concerned with redistribution or recognition, and proposed framing inequality as ‘structural injustice’, which could be useful in analysing contexts such as welfare-to-work initiatives in the UK.

Following the second panel, Javier Palummo Lantes, Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, addressed conference participants. He explained the priorities of the Commission in relation to economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, noting that the Commission seeks to address poverty and inequality using the American Convention on Human Rights and the Protocol on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as tools. He was keen to learn about participants’ work and invited them to participate in the Inter-American Commission’s public hearings.

Panel 3 then began, with Stefania Fiorella Rainaldi Redon (Queen Mary University London) presenting her paper ‘Is the Concept of Structural Discrimination Used by the Inter American Court of Human Rights Useful to Address Poverty?’ She highlighted three ways in which the Court utilises the concept of structural discrimination concerning poverty: to contextualise the victims’ circumstances, in relation to violations of articles 1(1) and 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights, and to shape structural remedies. She ended by outlining different models the Court can follow to shape state conduct beyond strict compliance.

Pamela S Smith Castro (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) presented on ‘Re-Integrating Recognition and Redistribution to Address the Injustices associated with Disability and Poverty’. She analysed the advances and challenges to redressing economic and misrepresentation injustices for persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Peru. She argued that while the Peruvian case shows significant legal advances in terms of recognition for PWDs, this is insufficient to address economic injustices. She ended by proposing guidelines for redesigning distributive measures that would help to enhance their impact.

Carla Elizabeth Cabanillas (University of Erfurt) discussed her paper ‘“Restorative Extraction” and the Limits of Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Laws: A Case Study on Struggle at the Margins of the Peruvian Copper Mines’. She presented preliminary findings from her project on whether Peruvian communities affected by copper extraction can mobilise the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. Her research indicated both the potential and limitations of mobilising the Act from below.

Siân McGibbon (UCL Laws, GCDC) rounded up the panel with her presentation on ‘Power by Proxy: Securing Socio-Economic Justice in the Data-Driven State’. She explained why discrimination linked to socioeconomic status is particularly concerning in the context of data-driven statistical modelling. She further provided directions on how the law can evolve to tackle some of these issues, including a quick fix in section 1 of the Equality Act and a more long-term solution that involves developing an understanding of public law relevance and rationality.

The final panel of the day saw Edward Pérez (UCL Laws, GCDC) begin with a presentation on ‘Addressing Poverty through Remedial Powers’. Pérez addressed how time influences structural remedies issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to address poverty in Brazil and Paraguay. Based on interviews with stakeholders, he shared preliminary findings, including that remedies take a long time to implement and that political will to comply with the Court’s judgments shifts across states over time.

Eva Pils (CHREN) presented on ‘Challenging Autocratic Developmentalism: An Examination of Poverty Reduction Narratives’. She explained how the narrative that autocracy is good for development and thus promotes socioeconomic rights is problematic and fails to highlight the violations of rights – including socioeconomic rights – that occur in autocratic states. She also argued that although criticisms of liberalism are justified, we cannot fight autocratisation without rights, which makes it fitting to reconsider liberalism in our thinking about equality.

Maike Middeler (Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg), in her presentation on ‘Human Rights-Based Commemoration and Economic Violence’, challenged the tendency to memorialise events using a human rights framing. She observed that this approach can narrow understandings of the past and its relevance to the present and future. She further argued that memorialisation often emphasises exceptional acts of violence while overlooking the structural conditions that enable such violence, with the latter becoming normalised.

Rishika Sahgal (University of Birmingham) presented on ‘Social Rights from Below: People, Procedure and Participation’, addressing the role of participation as a tool for oppressed people to achieve social justice. She argued that, through participation, marginalised groups can engage in the process of meaning-making, determining the content of social rights. She further outlined the role of the court in facilitating this process.

Following the panel discussions, Colm O’Cinneide (UCL Laws, GCDC) gave a keynote address. He started by pointing out the emerging consensus that the existing socioeconomic order is not fit for purpose, fuelling appetite for change. He stressed that legal processes help to establish a minimum core of rights that governments cannot easily ignore, and they enable effective scrutiny of decisions that marginalise certain groups. Additionally, while there are obstacles to the enforcement of socioeconomic rights, it is becoming increasingly common around the world for courts and tribunals to intervene in such cases. He concluded by suggesting that, in using the law to address socioeconomic rights, we must think seriously about legislation, institutional reform, and new participatory mechanisms.

We thank the following discussants for their insightful remarks at the conference: Cathi Albertyn (University of the Witwatersrand, discussant for Panel 1), Julie Ringelheim (UCLouvain, Panel 2), Jeff King (UCL Laws, GCDC Deputy Director, Panel 3), and Octavio Ferraz (King’s College London, Panel 4).