What is the Equality & Human Rights Impact Assessment Project?
Equality Impact Assessments have proven to be an important mechanism for building equality into the development of policies and practices across the public sector in Scotland. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Scotland and the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) consider that equality and human rights impact assessments (EQHRIAs) have the potential to enable human rights thinking also to be embedded into the policies, practices, procedures and priorities of those public bodies.
SHRC and EHRC Scotland wish to support organisations to capitalise on the potential benefits of EQHRIA and have developed a project with the following objectives:
(1) To advance a better understanding of equality and human rights and how to achieve better equality and human rights outcomes in policy and practice.
(2) To develop, in partnership, practical support for good practice approaches to equality and human rights impact assessment.
Working with pilot bodies
The EQHRIA project piloted this joint impact assessment model with two partner organisations, Fife and Renfrewshire Councils. The project began by establishing an understanding of current practices and approaches to assessing equality and human rights impacts, and developed appropriate means for the partner organisations to move beyond the legal requirement to carry out equality impact assessment towards having the capability to assess equality and human rights impacts together. The pilot bodies contributed to the development of ideas and also to the road-testing of such approaches.
Steering group
The Commissions convened a steering group of members including, the Scottish Government, COSLA, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Scottish Councils Equality Network, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, the Scottish Prison Service, Audit Scotland, SCVO and others who guided the work.
Outputs
Full details of the project, including the resource '10 Good Practise Building Blocks' can be found on the Scottish Human Rights website.
Last updated: 19 Feb 2019