A/HRC/32/32 States should ensure that information, training and support are provided to parents to enable them to help their adolescent children attain the highest attainable standard of health. D. Right to non-discrimination 50. The right to non-discrimination is fundamental to realizing adolescents’ right to health. Discrimination encompasses any distinction, exclusion or restriction that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms. 28 51. Adolescence itself can be a basis for discrimination, with many adolescents treated as dangerous or hostile, incompetent to make decisions, incarcerated, exploited or exposed to violence as a direct consequence of their age. Health-care providers may perpetuate discrimination against adolescents when they deny them health services or contraceptive supplies or treat them poorly, which can make adolescents reluctant to seek the health-care they need. Adolescents belonging to marginalized groups or sectors, such as girls, racial or ethnic minorities, indigenous populations, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex adolescents, refugees and adolescents with disabilities, face a heightened risk of exclusion. 52. To achieve substantive equality, States must take special measures in order to diminish or eliminate conditions that cause discrimination” 29 by introducing comprehensive legislation and policies, as well as affirmative action measures, to diminish or eliminate structural barriers and historic conditions that result in direct or indirect discrimination against any group of adolescents on any grounds. E. Participation 53. International human rights standards require the free, active and meaningful participation of people in decisions that affect their lives.30 In particular, States’ obligations under article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights require that the right of individuals and groups to participate in decision-making processes affecting their health and development must be an integral component of any relevant policy, programme or strategy. Right of adolescents to be heard and regarded as the subjects of rights 54. Children, including adolescents, lack the full autonomy of adults while being subjects of rights. Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child addresses the legal and social status of children, recognizing their capacity to form their own views and to express them freely in all matters affecting them and giving them due weight in accordance with age and maturity.31 55. This has been broadly conceptualized as the right to and principle of participation, and is central to the realization of adolescents’ right to health, both in individual matters relating to their own health care and in wider issues such as the design and development of 28 29 30 31 See Human Rights Committee general comment No. 18 (1994) on non-discrimination. See Committee on the Rights of the Child general comments No. 15, para. 12, and No. 5 (2003) on general measures of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, para. 12. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 21, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 25. See Committee on the Rights of the Child general comment No. 12 (2009) on the right of the child to be heard. 11