A/HRC/42/59/Add.1 Housing 60. Civil society representatives reported frequent discrimination in the housing and rental markets. For instance, they would be immediately rejected by landlords who could detect an African accent over the phone or recognized their names as African. Some were informed that an apartment was unavailable once they had met the landlord face to face. 61. In its Diversity Barometer: Housing, published in 2014, Unia stated that landlords named Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans, among others, as being undesirable. This was often due to negative and incorrect stereotypes and prejudices, such as a belief that subSaharan Africans lacked hygiene. Furthermore, sub-Saharan Africans received explicitly racist and offensive statements from neighbours and landlords, which was linked to the negative image conveyed through the media and political discourse about Muslims and French-speaking Africans. The area of Belgium and the language spoken in that area also played a part. French-speaking Africans encountered particular difficulties in the Flemish Region.15 Health 62. Several community members discussed the severe impact on their mental health due to racial discrimination. This included individualized racial slurs and hostile treatment, and several young people from different locations mentioned the dramatic impact of daily racism on their lives – including depression and becoming withdrawn – and the fact that no one in authority in their schools ever noticed or intervened. C. Multiple forms of discrimination 63. The Working Group found that people of African descent in Belgium often faced multiple forms of discrimination on the grounds of their race, colour, gender, sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The Working Group heard considerable testimony from civil society representatives and community members on intersectionality. People who meet the criteria for multiple marginalized groups may be particularly vulnerable and face extreme violence and harassment, yet they often remain invisible or deprioritized even within communities of African descent. This is particularly true for undocumented people of African descent, whose lives are particularly precarious and who have lacked regularization for years. In addition, women of African descent, particularly recent migrants, have faced challenges pursuing justice, social support and even shelter from domestic violence. 64. People of African descent with Muslim religious identity questioned why law enforcement authorities assumed they had terrorist ties. Some public officials implicitly acknowledged their role in this, including by defending the use of racial profiling as a counter-terrorism tactic and suggesting a false equivalence between anti-radicalism efforts and anti-racism programmes. They failed to understand that race-based assumptions regarding radicalism were inaccurate and grounded in bias, and that they diverted key resources away from protecting Belgian society from actual threats. V. Conclusions and recommendations A. Conclusions 65. The Working Group is concerned about the human rights situation of people of African descent in Belgium and concludes that inequalities are deeply entrenched because of structural barriers that intersect and reinforce each other. In its factfinding mission, the Working Group found clear evidence that racial discrimination is endemic in institutions in the country. Civil society representatives reported common 15 14 Unia, Baromètre de la diversité – Logement (Brussels, 2014).