Training manual on equality data collection and analysis to prevent and address systemic discrimination E-Book

Council of Europe

• Herausgeber: Council of Europe
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 88

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Ensuring equality, valuing diversity, fostering meaningful interaction and facilitating active citizenship and participation

Systemic discrimination is not immediately visible and is rarely the result of specific intent. Yet, it drives entrenched disadvantage and inequality for many groups in society. As this is a complex phenomenon to identify, the collection and analysis of equality data are indispensable.

Resulting from the collaborative work of local, regional and national authorities, this training manual addresses the need to combat and prevent systemic discrimination by focusing on data collection and processing.

This training manual will assist stakeholders in acquiring the necessary skills to develop suitable structures and systems, at all levels of governance, to effectively address systemic discrimination and drive the change needed.

This manual specifically draws from the work on systemic discrimination undertaken by the Intercultural Cities (ICC) Programme of the Council of Europe.

Each module of the manual includes material on approaches to collecting and analysing equality data, alongside “food-forthought” exercises, quizzes, checklists and reference documents. It also features a glossary of key intercultural terms as an appendix.

Leseprobe

 

Training manual

on equality data collection

and analysis to prevent and address

systemic discrimination

 

Committee of Experts on Intercultural

Integration of Migrants (ADI-INT)

 

Contents

Click here to see the whole table of contents, or go on the « Table of contents » option of your eReader.

Introduction

Starting points

The Model framework for an intercultural integration strategy at the nationallevel, adopted by the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI) in June 2021 (hereinafter “Model Framework”), establishes the underlying principles of intercultural integration as: ensuring equality (including combating all forms of discrimination), valuing diversity, fostering meaningful interaction and facilitating active citizenship and participation.1 It notes that “understood as policy goals, these principles help address the full range of diversity challenges and maximise the impact of policy and grassroots action in the field of equality”.2Under the principle of “ensuring equality”, the Model Framework states that: “Measures should be adopted to deal with both direct and indirect discrimination, with a special focus on systemic discrimination, on the basis of ‘visible’ diversity as well as inequality motivated by cultural difference, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity and other protected characteristics.” It emphasises the role of data in ensuring that the starting point for any national/multilevel intercultural integration strategy is “an evidence-based analysis of the situation that is to be addressed, through the prism of equality, diversity, interaction and participation”.

Likewise, Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 10 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on multilevel policies and governance for intercultural integration, adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 6 April 2022, under the same principle of “ensuring equality”, states that: “Direct or indirect discrimination in the functioning of public administration and in public service delivery should be identified and eliminated in a systematic way, including by carrying out anti-discrimination audits and reviews, adopting anti-discrimination charters and action plans to favour integration, providing anti-discrimination and intercultural training as well as intercultural mediation and, where possible, employing participatory service design that involves a diverse range of users.”3

This training manual has been developed by the Committee of Experts on Intercultural Integration of Migrants (ADI-INT) and was adopted on 29 June 2023 by the Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI). It is one of the tools produced to support the implementation of Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 10 on multilevel policies and governancefor intercultural integration (adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 6 April 2022) by Council of Europe member states.

Resulting from the collaborative work of local, regional and national authorities, this training manual responds to the desire to address and prevent systemic discrimination and underpins this focus on the role of data in enabling effective action on systemic discrimination. It will further help relevant stakeholders and agencies of Council of Europe member states to acquire some of the skills that are needed to implement the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers in this field. Data can be particularly useful in addressing and preventing systemic discrimination given that this is a phenomenon that is often invisible and without apparent intent.

Systemic discrimination involves the procedures, routines and organisational culture of any organisation that, often without intent, contribute to less favourable outcomes for minority groups than for the majority of the population, from the organisation’s policies, programmes, employment, and services.4

Systemic discrimination comes under a range of titles in the literature including “structural discrimination”; “institutional discrimination”; and “systematic discrimination”. It is not specifically defined in international or European legislation.

This manual draws more specifically from the work on systemic discrimination undertaken within the Intercultural Cities (ICC) Programme of the Council of Europe. This includes the 2020 “Policy brief –Identifying and preventing discrimination at the local level”5 and its accompanying policy study.6 The policy brief defines systemic discrimination (as above) and identifies four “strands” of action required on this issue at the local level, with equality data having a key role in rendering the issue visible and in providing an evidence base for effective action.

The training manual addresses the national, regional and local levels of governance, reflecting that all levels of governance have a necessary contribution to make in addressing and preventing systemic discrimination. It aligns with Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 107 which defines multilevel governance as a model of governance embracing central, regional and local governments, as well as civil society organisations. It states that: “Member States should adopt a holistic approach to integration by ensuring that public policies in all fields and at all levels, as well as civil society stakeholders, contribute to the goal of building inclusive societies.”

Purpose and target audience

This training manual focuses on the use of equality data in addressing and preventing systemic discrimination.

The aims are to:

► enhance the awareness and understanding of users of the potential of equality data in responding effectively to systemic discrimination, the issues in collecting and analysing equality data and the need for and nature of targeted equality data initiatives alongside equality data strategies, at all levels of governance; and

► inform and enable action by users on the collection and analysis of equality data, in a manner that can advance effective responses to systemic discrimination.

The target audience encompasses:

► stakeholders at all levels of governments engaged in:

– progressing the policy cycle of policy thinking, policy making, policy implementation and policy monitoring and evaluation; and

– data collection and management, and undertaking research and data analysis.

► stakeholders from:

– public policy institutions, statistical and research institutions, official statutory statistical bodies, academia and civil society organisations, at the national, regional and local levels of governance.

Content

This training manual addresses, in turn, each of the three following areas:

► Module 1 – Equality data: purpose and principles, which establishes the issue of systemic discrimination and explores the potential roles for equality data collection and analysis in addressing this issue, and the challenges in this.

► Module 2 – Targeted equality data initiatives, which explores a developmental approach to engaging with communities in generating and learning from equality data.

► Module 3 – An equality data strategy, which explores an institutional approach to realising ongoing and systematic collection, analysis and use of equality data to inform and shape policy and programme development.

Each module of the training manual includes material on approaches to and issues in collecting and analysing equality data in order to address and prevent discrimination, alongside food for thought exercises, quiz questions, checklists and reference documents. It also features an intercultural glossary of key terms as an appendix.

1 These principles are defined in the glossary of terms at the end of this training manual.

2 Model framework for an intercultural integration strategy at the national level –Interculturalintegration strategies: managing diversity as an opportunity, Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI), Council of Europe, 2021.

3 Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 10.

4 Policy brief– Identifying and preventing discrimination at the local level, Intercultural Cities, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 2020.

5 Ibid.

6 Policy study – Identifying and preventing systemic discrimination at the local level,Intercultural Cities, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 2020.

7 Recommendation CM/Rec (2022) 10 op.cit.

Module 1 Equality data: purpose and principles

This module examines and explores the basic elements for action on equality data collection and analysis in seeking to prevent and address systemic discrimination. It first establishes the nature and impact of systemic discrimination. It then examines equality data and the role of such data in responding to systemic discrimination. Finally, it explores the challenges faced in collecting equality data and the values that need to be engaged when meeting these challenges.

Systemic discrimination and equality data

Systemic discrimination

The Model Framework underlines the imperative of addressing systemic discrimination within any intercultural integration strategy, as part of the policy goal of ensuring equality. In this it draws attention to the work done by the Intercultural Cities Programme, which advances the following definition of systemic discrimination.

Systemic discrimination involves the procedures, routines and organisational culture of any organisation that, often without intent, contribute to less favourable outcomes for minority groups than for the majority of the population, from the organisation’s policies, programmes, employment, and services.8

Systemic discrimination is not an immediately visible issue. It is rarely a result of specific intent. It is a complex phenomenon to identify and establish. Yet, it is the source of disadvantage and inequality for a wide range of groups in society. This disadvantage and inequality are of an entrenched and intergenerational nature. Systemic discrimination thus undermines any ambition for ensuring equality (including non-discrimination), valuing diversity, fostering meaningful intercultural interaction or promoting active citizenship and participation, the four principles identified as underlying intercultural integration.9

Systemic discrimination can operate across the full spectrum of institutional endeavours: policy making, programme design, service delivery and employment. It can be detected across the full spectrum of policy fields: employment, income, education, health, housing, culture, policing, public infrastructure and beyond. It can also be evident at all levels of governance: national, regional and local.

Systemic discrimination becomes visible in the situation and experience of groups such as women, racialised groups,10 LGBTI people, people with disabilities, lone parents, carers, older people, young people, people with particular religious beliefs and groups with a particular socio-economic status. Unequal outcomes for these groups are the markers of systemic discrimination at work.

Equality data

The term “equality data” is understood “as any piece of information that is useful for the purposes of describing and analysing the state of equality. The information may be quantitative or qualitative in nature”.11 The gathering and analysis of such data have proven challenging and require the development of suitable structures and systems at all levels of governance to drive the change needed.

There is limited guidance available on such structures and systems. However, the European Commission, through its High-Level Group on Non-Discrimination, Equality and Diversity, has moved forward with useful initiatives on equality data that offer a structure and approach that are used increasingly widely, and that can be adapted for different member state contexts and different levels of governance.

Equality data include:

► data specifically gathered in relation to specific groups, which are aggregated to capture situations and experiences of inequality or their causes or effects; and

► data gathered for other purposes that are disaggregated, in being broken down by specific groups to assess the comparative situations of these groups.