Equality and Human Rights Commission

This report is intended as a first port of call for any public or private body which wishes to conduct a human rights impact assessment (HRIA) or to integrate human rights into an equality, health or environmental impact assessment. It maps examples of this relatively new area of work in the UK and internationally and, based upon these, identifies an eight step methodology for carrying out HRIAs. The report will assist organisations to develop HRIA methodologies and practices appropriate to their particular area of work. It includes two extended case studies (one in social care, the other in education). The report also includes a compendium of resources relating to HRIA and a brief review of each. The report is easy to navigate with interactive links that permit the reader to move easily between sections.

• Human rights impact assessments have the potential to prevent human rights violations before they happen if they are undertaken at a point in the policy cycle before decisions are made and before people are affected.
• The human rights model encourages participation in policy making by the people affected and transparency in the process of undertaking impact assessment.
• Equality Impact Assessments focus on relative treatment rather than absolute standards. Avoiding discrimination or promoting equality does not necessarily raise the standard of treatment for everybody. In contrast, human rights can raise general standards to an acceptable level and protect against universally bad treatment.
   

Aim of this report

This report:

• introduces the concept of human rights impact assessment, highlighting its potential benefits and limitations
• summarises and analyses existing practice in HRIA in the UK and internationally
• identifies an eight-step methodology for HRIAs and recommendations for how those steps should be implemented
• provides two illustrations of the processes by which HRIAs might be undertaken
• discusses the advantages and disadvantages of integrated impact assessments, and how HRIAs should be integrated with equality impact assessments and could be integrated with health and environmental impact assessments, and
• concludes with some strategic questions for organisations planning to undertake HRIAs.

What is human rights impact assessment?

Impact assessment is a tool for evaluating the effect of policies, practices, programmes and regulatory interventions across a wide range of fields. Just as policymakers consider the environmental, social or economic impacts of policies by conducting impact assessments, so HRIAs aim to make policymakers consider the human rights impact of their policies. There are very few examples of HRIAs in the UK, but a wider range of examples internationally.

The report explains that HRIAs are a means of either:
 

• ensuring that the human rights implications of a policy are considered when that policy is being developed; or
• assessing the impact of policy or practice on the rights of those affected once the policy is implemented.

HRIAs draw on internationally agreed definitions of human rights as set out in various international conventions, as well as in domestic law. Within the UK, the rights being assessed are almost always those set out in the Human Rights Act, which gives direct effect in domestic law to the rights guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights.

A notable exception is the Children’s Rights Impact Assessment model developed by Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, which draws on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The human rights model also requires impacts to be disaggregated to focus specifically on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged whose rights are most frequently overlooked.

Advantages of conducting a human rights impact assessment

The report explains that HRIAs offer a holistic approach to human rights protection. They have the potential to impact upon the ways that policy is developed with regard to the human rights of all individuals rather than only those who have the resources to bring cases to courts.

In addition, HRIAs have the potential to prevent violations of human rights before they happen if they are undertaken at a point in the policy cycle before decisions are made and before people are affected. HRIAs also enable human rights to be ‘mainstreamed’ within policymaking. This has the potential to affect both institutional cultures and individual decision-making throughout an organisation.

The report also highlights risks that might prevent these benefits from being realised. These include the risk that HRIAs become simply a bureaucratic or ‘tick box’ process that must be overcome before a decision is made. There is also a danger that impact assessment will concentrate on short-term impacts that are easily quantifiable rather than long term impacts that are not easily anticipated but may be more meaningful.

How to conduct a human rights impact assessment

There is no single blueprint for undertaking HRIAs. One of the key findings of the report is that HRIA methodologies are very context-specific. However, the report identifies a broad consensus around eight steps in the HRIA process. These are:

1. A screening stage: performing a preliminary check on the proposed policy to determine whether or not a full-scale impact assessment is necessary.
2. A scoping stage: the initial questions that need to be asked once the decision to undertake a full HRIA has been undertaken.
3. Evidence gathering: collecting information to inform analysis of the policy.
4. Consultation: procedures for ensuring the voices of those (likely to be) affected by the policy are heard and taken into account in the HRIA process.
5. Analysis: analysing the (likely) human rights impact of the policy.
6. Conclusions and recommendations: setting out the results of the HRIA and the action which needs to be taken as a result, including alternative proposals and mitigating measures.
7. Publication: ensuring that the HRIA process is fully transparent.
8. Monitoring and review: action to make sure that the HRIA is not a one off process but an ongoing and cyclical review of policy.

The report explains each of these steps in detail and makes recommendations about how they should be carried out. It illustrates each step by means of brief examples or quotations from HRIAs undertaken in the UK and abroad. It also draws attention to potential pitfalls and limitations that might be encountered at each stage.

The report also contains two extended case studies. These illustrate the general process a HRIA might follow in two different settings. The first illustration is of a local authority decision to ‘refocus’ social care spending on those defined as having most need. In particular it involves budget-cutting issues, a range of human rights issues, and complex issues of timing, evidence and consultation.

The second relates to a school that undertakes an assessment of all its policies. In particular, it involves consideration of how the screening and scoping process would function.

Related equality messages

Each of the case studies examines how the equalities impacts of the policies in question would be assessed, although this report focuses mainly on the human rights aspect of the assessment.

The report recommends that human rights and equality impact assessment should generally be combined in this way. Non-discrimination and equality are fundamental human rights principles and so the two forms of impact assessment are mutually reinforcing. Moreover, equality impact assessments focus on relative treatment rather than absolute standards. Avoiding discrimination or promoting equality does not necessarily raise the standard of treatment for everybody. In contrast, human rights can raise general standards to an acceptable level and protect against universally bad treatment.

There is extensive existing practice by public bodies in the UK of undertaking equality impact assessments. The report links to examples of these and provides brief comments on each.

Date of review

March 2012

• Centre for Human Rights in Practice and Coventry Women's Voices (2011) Unravelling Equality? A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment of the Public Spending Cuts on Women in Coventry.
  http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/chrp/projectss/humanrightsimpactassessments/cwv/report/
• NHS Wales Centre for Equality and Human Rights (undated) A toolkit for carrying out equality impact assessment. http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sites3/Documents/256/NHS%20CEHR%20Toolkit.pdf
• Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People (2006) Children’s Rights Impact Assessment: the SCCYP Model. http://www.sccyp.org.uk/uploaded_docs/children's%20rights%20impact%20assessment.pdf

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