A/HRC/31/21 that ending the difference in treatment would have had, arguing that even if the difference in treatment could no longer be justified, the State should nonetheless enjoy a margin of appreciation in choosing the timing and means for extending the refugee assistance scheme to the children of displaced women. However, on 13 October 2015, the European Court of Human Rights held that neither of those considerations sufficed to remedy the otherwise discriminatory nature of the scheme. Whatever the attempts to expand the scheme from 1974 to 2003, none of the changes introduced during that period had addressed the clear difference in treatment between the children of displaced men and the children of displaced women. Furthermore, the Court stated that budgetary considerations alone could not serve to justify a clear difference in treatment based exclusively on gender, particularly when the successive expansions of the scheme between 1974 and 2013 would themselves have had financial consequences. The Court also found it particularly striking that the scheme had continued on the basis of that difference in treatment until 2013, nearly 40 years after its introduction. According to the Court, “the fact the scheme persisted for so long, and yet continued to be based solely on traditional family roles as understood in 1974, means that the State must be taken to have exceeded any margin of appreciation it enjoyed in this field. Very weighty reasons would have been required to justify such a long-lasting difference in treatment. None have been shown to exist. There is accordingly no objective and reasonable justification for this difference in treatment”. For those reasons, the Court concluded that “the difference in treatment between the children of displaced women and the children of displaced men was discriminatory”. 14 It also found that there was no effective remedy before a national authority. 24. With regard to the situation of Turkish Cypriots, the Human Rights Committee, in its concluding observations of 31 March 2015, expressed concern about the absence of Turkish-speaking staff in the Office of the Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights and the fact that its reports were not published in Turkish.15 It also expressed concerns about reports of a rise in incidents of racially motivated verbal and physical abuse by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups against Turkish Cypriots. The Committee also referred to allegations that a significant number of Turkish Cypriots had been unable to vote during the 2014 European Parliament elections because their correct residential addresses had not been entered in the Government’s database. Furthermore, the Committee was concerned that amendments to the Electoral Law requiring Turkish Cypriots to register by filing a form with the Ministry of the Interior specifying, inter alia, their residential address, had not been disseminated and translated into the Turkish language. The Human Rights Committee recommended that Cyprus take immediate steps to ensure that Turkish Cypriots had the same rights and obligations as all other Cypriot citizens, both in law and in fact, to vote and stand for elections and that it ensure that all future amendments and laws concerning participation in elections were disseminated and published in both official languages (see CCPR/C/CYP/CO/4, paras. 5, 7 and 22). 25. In a joint statement issued on 18 November 2015, the Greek Cypriot leader and the Turkish Cypriot leader condemned in the strongest terms the shameful incidents that had occurred on 16 November, during which Turkish Cypriots had been targeted. The two leaders affirmed that they would stand together against racism and hatred, whatever the source, and that such deplorable acts would be thoroughly investigated and would not go unpunished. They added that they would not allow such unacceptable incidents to jeopardize the ongoing negotiations. 14 15 European Court of Human Rights, Vrountou v. Cyprus, judgment of 13 October 2015, application No. 33631/06, paras. 78-81. The Office of the Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights (Ombudsman) is the national human rights institution for the Republic of Cyprus. 7