Equality and human rights is a natural area where Local Development Companies (LDCs) can drive development, integrating it as practice across the community, state sector and in our local communities – to the benefit of those we serve.

LDCs have a particular responsibility for equality and human rights. This is because of the types of programmes they deliver and because the core focus for LDCs is social inclusion and community development. Equality and human rights are foundational to both.

Take the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP). Its guidelines state that: “The Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty is a statutory obligation for public bodies which requires them to promote equality and prevent discrimination.”

Public Sector Duty

The Public Sector Duty requires public bodies, including publicly-funded bodies, to work to:

 Eliminate discrimination
 Promote equality of opportunity
 Protect human rights

For community workers this may sound like preaching to the converted, but the degree to which equality and human rights permeates the sector, I would suggest, varies considerably due to a variety of factors.

Variations in the implementation of the duty are perhaps even more pronounced in the public service and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission does not have the resources to monitor the implementation of the duty.

Opportunity
There are very few groups and arguably none at local level who have both the responsibility and the capacity to focus on equality and human rights. It can be challenging and is not always popular with all sections of our communities, but then pleasing everyone is not our key objective.

Change and culture
To better practice what we preach, what might change look like?

We need to have a clear plan and a culture from the top down that supports equality and human rights. It needs to be led by actions and requires a clear commitment and setting of standards.

Developing a Strategy

Equality policies and value statements are, as Americans say, a bit like motherhood and apple pie – most people do not disagree with them and will nod enthusiastically which is because they are banal, unchallenging. Such policies and value statements are of limited value unless they are underpinned by a plan with actions and expected outcomes. What gets measured gets done.

The overall ambition should be that an organisation delivers its work with an equality lens, that it looks at barriers and ensures that it has a strategy on equality and human rights. It cannot just strive to prevent discrimination; it should also seek to eliminate barriers.

Specifically, this could involve looking at areas such as:

Staffing
 How diverse is the staff? (e.g. How can we encourage minorities?)
 How can you ensure non-biased recruitment?
 Do staff face barriers or inequalities based on their characteristics?

Corporate
 How diverse are boards and how representative are they of the social inclusion target groups?
 How inclusive is the organisation’s messaging and image?

Barriers
What barriers do service-users face when accessing services and how can these be reduced?

Walking the talk!
In North East West Kerry Development, we are completing an Equality and Human Rights strategy. The purpose is to apply an equality and human rights lens to our work and use it as a foundation for all our work. We’re going to try and walk the talk!