Written - Development of the Welsh Assembly Government Human Rights Strategy

The first of October 2007 marked the launch of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the new Single Equality body.   The Commission is set up to champion equality and human rights for all, and to work to eliminate discrimination, reduce inequality, protect human rights and to build good relations, ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to participate in society.  I extend a warm welcome to the Commission in Wales, under the leadership of Kate Bennett as Director for Wales. I hope that the new Commission will take all the good practice from the three former equality bodies, and build on that.  

This mission statement of the Commission is entirely in line with our commitment in “One Wales”  -  to create a fair and just society where we commit to tackling the issues in our society where these fundamental rights are most clearly challenged. Another of our One Wales commitments is to making a success of the ECHR in Wales, and it is important that we work closely with them from the outset to do that.

As part of the new agenda for equality and human rights, it is right that we build on the progress made, but also focus clearly on what we in Wales can do to secure human rights and promote awareness of the human rights and equality agenda. Our strategy will be to link human rights and equality together in the future. This provides a real opportunity for us to build a human rights framework into our equality agenda, and that is what I want to do over the next six months, working closely with the ECHR as they develop their work programme.

Our vision for equality is to create a world class Wales, where the richness of our culture is celebrated; where every individuals’ unique contribution is valued; and  where freedom, choice, dignity and respect are the cornerstone of the way we live.

The Government of Wales Acts of 1998 and 2006 put us is in a unique position. Equality must be enshrined in all our work.  The Human Rights Act 1998 helps to shape our direction of travel.

The Human Rights Act places all public authorities under an obligation to respect human rights by treating everyone with fairness, equality, dignity, respect and autonomy. It is used to protect elderly people who are abused in care homes, to ensure disabled children are provided with school and to protect people from domestic violence.

Our Human Rights Strategy will underpin our Single Equality Scheme.  We will build capacity within the Assembly and we will raise awareness across Wales of human rights.  We have begun work to develop this already in terms of training our staff. For example, the British Institute of Human Rights will provide training for our staff on what human rights are and how they can impact on their day to day working lives.  All staff will have easy to use resources to refer to when making important decisions about their work to ensure that human rights are protected and enhanced.

To ensure the people of Wales understand their human rights we support this by delivering an external awareness raising campaign  over the next year, reaching out to all communities.   We have begun to do this over the summer, as part of our work on the European Year of Equal Opportunities, taking the message out to communities using road shows at events and using stands in town centres.

I intend to consult on the Scheme, underpinned by the Strategy, in the new year, after series of meetings with individuals and organisations across Wales have been held.  It is essential that their views inform us about what our priorities for the equality and human rights agenda should be.  These begin in the next few weeks.

I believe we have made significant progress in promoting equality of opportunity for all. We cannot, however, rest on our laurels as there is clearly still much we must do.  We must look to our commitment to a single equality scheme, and ensure it is robustly underpinned and demonstrates our commitment to the human rights framework.  

We in Wales have led the way in some areas, for example, our Croeso project – funded by the Assembly to promote good community relations.  While the focus has been on race relations, there is no reason why this model of good practice should not be extended further across age, disability, gender, religion and sexual orientation.

A coherent approach to human rights will allow us to deliver better and more focused public services to the people of Wales. We, as the Welsh Assembly Government must respond positively and welcome this challenge.