The Commission has created these documents to be used only as guides for assessing the human rights impacts of new or amended statutory instruments, with the aim of ensuring compliance with the Bill of Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities.
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This document has been created to be used as a guide when creating new policies or reviewing existing policies to assess compliance with the Bill of Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities.
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This booklet has been published to assist public officials in understanding the responsibilities placed on them in their official capacity by our Bill of Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities.
Open Book Read MoreThe Scottish Human Rights Commission (“the SHRC”) has provided an in-depth explanation of the importance of equality and human rights impact assessments which is described below.
Equality and human rights impact assessments (EQHRIAs) are an important mechanism for enabling equality and human rights considerations to be embedded into the policies, practices, procedures and priorities of public bodies. Assessing impact can help public authorities to achieve better outcomes by taking account of the rights of individuals whose interests may otherwise be overlooked and improve performance by making sure that action taken is effective and efficient. It also means developing better policies and practices, based on evidence, and being transparent and accountable to stakeholders. EQHRIAs can encourage individuals and communities to participate in decision making processes, giving them ownership of decisions and transforming institutional cultures and decision making.
There is both a business case and a legal case for assessing human rights impact.
Integrating equality and human rights into governance, policy and decision making structures will help to:
Equality and human rights are core to achieving national and local performance outcomes which aim to improve the quality of life and opportunities for all people across Scotland.
The consideration of human rights and equality issues will assist in improving performance in delivering high quality public services as efficiently, effectively and economically as possible as they will ensure they are responsive to people’s individual circumstances at the point of delivery.
Where equality and human rights are assessed, based on evidence and the meaningful involvement of communities, stronger relationships will be built and it will be easier to demonstrate fairness, transparency, accessibility and accountability thereby enhancing public ownership and legitimacy in policy and decision making.
Proactively taking account of human rights and equality in the exercise of an organisation’s functions will provide it with assurances rather than assumptions that actions are fair, not arbitrary, and that they comply with the law. This helps to prevent violations before they require redress and thus reduce both legal and financial risks and expense.
In addition to the above the integration of human rights into your impact assessment approach will assist with following:
In furthering the above objectives it is practical to use an integrated approach for integrated thinking around equality and human rights, avoiding duplication of time and effort whilst ensuring policy making which improves outcomes for everyone. Human rights are inherently “person centred” putting people at the heart of effective public service design and delivery in a consistent and clear way. It provides a legal and objective basis for ensuring a person centred approach in practice, focusing the attention of service design on what will deliver the best outcomes for people, rather than 'one size fits all' policies which seek to make people fit systems.
The Human Rights Act 1998 makes it unlawful for a public body or those performing a public function to act, or fail to act, in a way that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. This means understanding human rights and taking them into account in all day to day work. Introducing human rights while having due regard to equality in policy analysis will assist organisations meet duties under the Human Rights Act 1998 by:
The public sector equality duty covers the following protected characteristics: age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation as well as marriage and civil partnerships, with regard to eliminating unlawful discrimination in employment.
Human rights however, belong to all of us regardless of status or any protected characteristic. As Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights.’ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
The universality of rights and the equal enjoyment of rights by all persons provides a different perspective on some of the policy areas considered in the case studies and pilots.
As human rights apply to everyone, taking an Human Rights Based Approach compliments an equality analysis by prompting consideration of whether the impact of a policy on people’s rights is acceptable and also how a policy might drive up standards of services and enhance positive impacts for all people, not only those defined by particular characteristics. It could mean that impacts disproportionately affecting vulnerable, disadvantaged or voiceless communities are considered where they might otherwise be overlooked. This would include, for example, consideration of impacts on people living in poverty, homeless people, carers, or people with a particular health status (such as people living with HIV).
A human rights analysis can help balance competing rights and interests of different people. This is because very few rights are absolute. Most human rights can be interfered with when justified, in pursuit of a legitimate aim, such as the protection of the rights of others, and proportionate, that is the minimum necessary interference in pursuit of a legitimate aim. You can learn and understand more about this in our basic training resource.
By demonstrating that policy and decision making takes account of the rights of everyone an impact assessment can support the understanding that there are rights to be respected for all communities, whilst also paying regard to protected characteristic groups.
As one council officer said: “I think that’s what a lot of people forget about human rights. …It’s not just one thing or another, you do have to balance different people’s rights and priorities.”
Local authorities have provided examples of balancing competing rights and interests in practice, including:
Furthermore an understanding of human rights and the concept of proportionality helps to balance rights and risks in decision making, getting the balance right between protecting people from risk of harm and upholding autonomy. Human rights require that we act to protect people at risk of serious harm. They require that any restriction on our right to live our life as we choose (our autonomy) be based on law, pursue a “legitimate aim” such as protecting the rights of others, and be the least restrictive effective means of achieving that aim. Understanding the balance of these rights and duties provides a framework for making difficult decisions on balancing risk and rights.
Human rights are fundamentally about the human dignity of all of us and the opportunity to lead fulfilling lives. A human rights analysis will identify where impacts on people with protected characteristic or others reach a threshold which could amount to a human rights violation. This includes but is not limited to those impacts already identified by an equality analysis. Taking an Human Rights Based Approach helps puts in place minimum standards of treatment for all regardless of whether they are from a protected characteristic group. In human rights terms everyone must be treated with dignity and respect.