In 2022, Unia continued to fight on behalf of discriminated citizens. In our annual report, we look back at our efforts to combat discrimination and promote equality in Belgium.

The new 2022 edition of the Socio-Economic Monitoring shows that people of foreign origin still have more difficulties on the labour market in Belgium.

Did you know that 86% of family caregivers of people with disabilities are women? That the employment rate of women of foreign backgrounds is still lower than that of men, that they are more often employed in part-time jobs, with lower wages or in specific employment sectors, such as domestic help?

Since 2011, Unia has been the independent mechanism for promoting, protecting and monitoring the application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Belgium.

"Improving equality data collection in Belgium” (IEDCB) is a Belgian project co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) programme of the Directorate-General for Justice of the European Commission. It was realised thanks to a partnership between Unia and the Equal Opportunities Team of the Federal Public Service for Justice. The project aims to improve the collection and processing of equality data in Belgium. 

Lack of reliable and centralized data on allegations of police violence, refoulement or deportation of foreigners despite the risk of torture and ill-treatment, and persistent shortcomings in the care of internees: these are some of the findings of this report.

In this extraordinary year, Unia continued to fight for human rights and equality. The corona pandemic acted like a magnifying glass. Those already in a vulnerable position were often the first or hardest hit by Covid-19 or its measures.

Did you know that in Belgium there is no legal framework allowing a person who is being controlled by the police to know why he or she is being checked out? That it took twelve years for a royal decree on positive actions in the workplace to be approved for the private sector, and that this still did not happen for the public sector? And that Belgium, during the Durban conference (2001), committed itself to drawing up an inter-federal action plan against racism, the implementation of which only started this year (2021)?

In Belgium, a person's origin is still  an obstacle on the labour market. To help change this situation, the Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue and Unia have jointly developed the ‘Socio-economic Monitoring’. A fourth publication, in line with the three previous ones, has just been published.

Unia funded a research on police selectivity, conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC) and the Brussels North police zone. Main conclusion? The management of a police zone has a strong impact on police practices. It is therefore at this level that we must work to improve the relationship between the police and the population.