Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy: Consultation

Annex A: Background and Approach to Development

The Programme for Government (PfG) 2023-2024, as well as the most recent one for 2024-2025, and the Policy Prospectus launched in April 2023, reiterated the commitment to produce a Strategy to mainstream equality and human rights.

In the pursuit of building a Strategy that tackles inequality and discrimination and promotes equal opportunities, we held several engagement sessions with Partners both internally and externally. These Partners include officials from across Scottish Government, the public sector and equalities and human rights third sector organisations. In our engagement, we covered a wide range of critical issues through a series of informative sessions. From August 2021 to March 2022 the Mainstreaming and Strategy Unit in the Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights Division held several ‘Deep Dive’ sessions with stakeholders. These Deep Dives were held to inform our initial thinking on a Strategy to mainstreaming equality and human rights in Scotland.

‘Deep Dive’ sessions were held from July – November 2022 on specific topics assessed to be critical in forming a Mainstreaming Strategy. In these sessions, the emerging issues from the Deep Dives were brought together under the following six main key themes, felt to be integral to mainstreaming equality and human rights: Strengthening Leadership; Developing accountability and transparency; Ensuring effective regulatory and policy environment; Utilising evidence and experience; Enhancing capability and culture; Improving Capacity. The result of the analysis of the feedback received during the Deep Dive sessions revealed some shortcomings and ambiguity with the intended outcomes of the Mainstreaming Strategy.

We will also utilise the analysis of the responses to the prior consultation exercise on the Human Rights Bill to further inform the draft Strategy.