Equality Inquiry Submission

September 18, 2024

The Human Rights Consortium has submitted its response to the Committee for the Executive Office Inquiry on Gaps in Equality Legislation.

The Committee for the Executive Office is a statutory Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Committee is conducting an inquiry on differences in equality legislation between the regions of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The purpose of the inquiry is to find out where equality legislation is different in Northern Ireland to other jurisdictions and to understand the impacts this has.

The formal objectives of the inquiry are to:

• Examine differences in equality legislation between Northern Ireland and other jurisdictions of the UK
• Examine divergence between equality legislation in Northern Ireland, the
  European Union and other jurisdictions since the UK exit from the EU (Brexit)
• Examine concluding observations relating to legislative change relating to equality in Northern Ireland from examinations of the UK by international human rights bodies
• Investigate the impacts of gaps in legislation
• Make recommendations for change in legislation in Northern Ireland

The Consortium’s response was informed by a workshop hosted by the Human Rights Consortium
and Ulster University’s Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) at Ulster University in
August 2024. The event was supported by the AHRC Impact Accelerator Account at
Ulster University. We would particularly like to thank Professor Rory O’Connell from Ulster University for his help in drafting this submission.

Our response (available for download below) highlighted a range of ways in which we felt that this inquiry process could help create enhanced equality and human rights protections in Northern Ireland. These included broadening the inquiry to include an analysis of the human rights gaps in Northern Ireland, being ambitious in their approach by seeking to expand the suite of protections available here, ensuring a human rights based approach to their work, adopting Single Equality legislation, moving beyond anti-discrimination legislation and pushing for stand alone equality provisions in a NI Bill of Rights, learning the lessons from other jurisdictions in the UK and Europe and adopting some of the positive legislative developments from those areas while ensuring that existing positive elements from NI equality law are not undermined.

We look forward to the response from the committee and further engaging in this process. This is an opportunity to expand our existing equality and rights protections that should not be missed.