number of international human rights treaties209 specifically acknowledge the acceptability of temporary special measures to combat institutionalized discrimination in the short term. In relation to national minorities, OSCE participating States have agreed to adopt, where necessary, special measures for the purpose of ensuring to persons belonging to national minorities full equality with the other citizens in the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.210 Inter-sectionality or multiple discrimination Discrimination may occur on multiple grounds. People have many defining characteristics and it may not be clear whether a person has suffered discrimination because of their religion, or their ethnic identity or race, or their sex or gender, or for a mix of different prejudices. Further, a woman may experience discrimination in different ways from a man, or the same discriminatory act may have different consequences. “Double discrimination” can also occur, for example when women from minorities face discrimination from their own communities because of their sex in addition to discrimination from the majority society because of their minority status. Without awareness of so-called inter-sectionality, forms of discrimination may pass unnoticed, or be ignored because of an assumption that discrimination is based on one characteristic, when another — or a combination — may be the cause. As another element of inter-sectionality, a clear link exists between non-discrimination on grounds of race and ethnicity and religious freedom. While the right to religious freedom is important as a free-standing right, experience demonstrates that those who most need the protection that religious freedom provides are members of religious minorities who are frequently also racial or ethnic minorities. Minority rights According to the OSCE 1990 Copenhagen Document, persons belonging to national minorities have the right freely to express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity and to maintain and develop their culture in all its aspects, free of any attempts at assimilation against their will.211 The Copenhagen Document contains a catalogue of minority rights aimed at the protection and promotion of the identity of minorities, which influenced the drafting of the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and of the 1995 Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). In fact, the FCNM, which is the first multilateral legally binding instrument containing minority rights, was drafted in order to transform the political commitments concerning the protec- 209 E.g., Art. 4 CEDAW (“1. Adoption by States Parties of temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination as defined in the present Convention, but shall in no way entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate standards; these measures shall be discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved. 2. Adoption by States Parties of special measures, including those measures contained in the present Convention, aimed at protecting maternity shall not be considered discriminatory”). See also Art. 2(2) ICERD. 210 Op. cit., note 6, 1990 Copenhagen Document, para. 31. 211 Ibid., para. 32. Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights 85