Belfast, 30 November to 5 December 2003
Mainstreaming equality into the development of public policy and service delivery is one of the central challenges in modern democracies. Equality legislation has often focussed on the elimination of discrimination and the promotion of equality of opportunity.

In some jurisdictions such legislation provides protection on a wide range of grounds, in others on more limited grounds. Aspects of legislation in some jurisdictions move beyond the mere avoidance of discrimination and create obligations to make positive changes to the benefit of particular groups in certain circumstances. So, too, in some jurisdictions, the nexus between human rights legislation and equality legislation is close while in others there remains bridges to be built between two growing bodies of law.

There is growing experience of and interest in complementary means of moving towards greater equality, such as mainstreaming equality considerations into the heart of policy-making and service delivery. In Northern Ireland, mainstreaming has a statutory basis, in the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which establishes an equality duty on public authorities in Northern Ireland. This obliges public authorities to carry out their functions with due regard to promote equality of opportunity across nine grounds – religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, disability and dependency status. The Act also obliges public authorities to have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between people of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group. In Great Britain, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 introduced a statutory general duty on listed public bodies to promote race equality.

This seminar aims to explore means of working towards an inclusive equality agenda, one that will deliver greater equality outcomes successfully. It focuses on equality concepts underpinning legislation, including:

• practical expressions of rights and responsibilities through legislation
• complementary strategies to progress towards greater equality
• institutional and organisational models as delivery mechanisms for change.

Participant Profile
This event will bring together senior policy makers in the public sector, equality and human rights specialists, academics, lawyers, and representatives of NGOs working in these fields. The event’s themes are chosen to foster exchanges of practice, experience and theoretical knowledge and the seminar will be highly interactive, providing much opportunity for such exchanges among the participants as well as invited speakers.