freedom from discrimination also requires states to counteract discrimination by both public and private actors and bodies in all fields.44 37. OSCE participating States have committed themselves to ensure that individuals who exercise, express the intention to exercise or seek to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as members of their families, are not discriminated against in any manner as a consequence of doing so.45 Accordingly, individuals exercising these rights and freedoms in order to promote and strive for the protection and realization of human rights must not be discriminated against as a consequence of their activities. 38. Human rights defenders must be protected from discrimination in the exercise of the full range of their rights, including their civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms, all of which are “of paramount importance and must be fully realized by all appropriate means.”46 This also includes access on an equal basis to public services, such as health care, housing, education or employment. Discrimination in granting access to such services is often used as a tool to silence human rights defenders or inhibit human rights work. Participating States should ensure that human rights defenders and members of their families have access to public services on an equal basis with others, and should protect them from any form of discrimination as a result of their human rights work or the human rights activities of their relatives. 39. Furthermore, individuals should not be discriminated against on any of the grounds set out above in the exercise of their rights and freedoms, including where such discrimination prevents them from freely exercising their right to defend human rights on an equal basis with others, for example, by imposing discriminatory restrictions on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, assembly and association on certain groups such as persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities or other groups. 40. In accordance with the prohibition of discrimination, states shall ensure that everyone on their territory and subject to their jurisdiction enjoys human rights and fundamental freedoms,47 regardless of their nationality or condition of statelessness, including asylum seekers, refugees, migrant workers and others.48 The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities states that “[p]ersons belonging to minorities may exercise their rights (...) individually as well as in community with other members of 44  UN Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 28, Article 3, “The Equality of Rights Between Men and Women”, UN Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.10, 29 March 2000, para. 31. 45  Concluding Document of the Vienna Meeting – Third Follow-up Meeting to the Helsinki Conference, Vienna 1989, “Questions Relating to Security in Europe: Principles”, para. 13.8. 46  Vienna 1989, para. 12. 47  Vienna 1989. 48  See UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 31, para. 10. Guidelines on the Protection of Human Rights Defenders 35