Tackling Institutional Racism: Realising the Potential of Equality Bodies is an Equinet perspective which looks at the definitions of institutional racism, the ways in which equality bodies can work to tackle this, and what challenges or enablers they may experience along the way.
“Naming institutional racism itself is a step in the right direction. However, and just naming it is not enough, and that’s not going to change the things. We need active policies and we need progressive policies and action coming from the state institutions.” Dr. Sindy Joyce, Member of the Council of State of Ireland, Equinet’s Conference ‘Tackling Institutional Racism – The Potential of Equality bodies’ 9 December 2021.
Institutional racism in Europe is a longstanding equality concern. Yet, the global Black Lives Matter movement and the disproportional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with minority racial or ethnic background, have compelled people in Europe to confront pervasive, systematic racism. As a result, growing acknowledgement and political attention on the specific issue of institutional racism offers an opportunity to step up the action against racism.
Amid the crisis, we must seize on such opportunity. As an initial and needed response, the Commission adopted the EU anti-racism action plan 2020-2025, specifically aimed to acknowledge structural racism, setting out a series of measures and calling actors at all levels in a common endeavour to address racism more effectively. Equinet is seizing this opportunity as well, aware of the potential of equality bodies to take up the challenge to address institutional racism across all of their functional areas.
The potential of national equality bodies
Because of their mandates and their functions, equality bodies can foster organisational and social change, in addition to assisting individuals who are victims of racism. Equality bodies are engaged in actions to provide advice and assistance in relation to institutional racism; engage in hearing, and pursue own-initiative cases and amicus curiae interventions. For instance, in Belgium, Unia is identified as pursuing strategic litigation on cases that establish legal precedent; clarify points-of-law; refer to particularly serious facts; are illustrative of a societal debate; relate to a repeated problem; refer to a priority area of Unia strategy; or relate to structural discrimination.
Under the promotion of equality and prevention of discrimination function, equality bodies report significant levels of research to uncover and provide evidence on institutional racism. The work reported by equality bodies includes initiatives to improve gathering and analysis of equality data. For example, the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman in Finland published a research report on ‘Racism and discrimination – everyday experiences for People of African descent in Finland’ that identified discrimination at the individual level and the institutional level. Institutional racism was established in a number of fields, in particular education, employment, and security services and law enforcement and recommendations are made in relation to addressing structures identified as reflecting institutional racism.
Furthermore, equality bodies have built up extensive experience and expertise in addressing racism which is used to engage in advisory functions through providing policy advice on addressing institutional racism, and on the ambition for and implementation of National Action Plans against Racism.
Equinet sought to underline this potential in the mandate and functions of equality bodies through the development of a perspective.
An Equinet Perspective ‘Tackling Institutional Racism: Realising the Potential of Equality Bodies’
The Perspective was drafted by Equinet’s Working Group on Policy Formation and has been informed by a conference on the topic of tackling institutional racism, organised by Equinet in December 2021. This Perspective aims to discuss the potential of equality bodies across their various functions to contribute to tackling institutional racism, identifying some exemplars of current work in this regard.
It concludes with recommendations to equality bodies to strengthen their focus on and deepen their capacity in addressing institutional racism, as well as recommending National and European level authorities to usefully strengthen equal treatment legislation to better address institutional racism. Specifically at the European level, legislation on standards for equality bodies could be introduced to enable their role in addressing institutional racism and ensure the provision of adequate human and financial resources.