Barnardo's Northern Ireland calls on the Executive to withdraw the Draft Framework for Race Relations

We want to be clear that we are concerned that the draft Race Relations Framework will not make any difference to the lives of the children, families, and communities in Northern Ireland who are impacted by racial inequality. We have serious concerns that this Framework does not address the systemic barriers to equality across our public services, instead focusing on framing racism as an issue of “community cohesion” and does not represent the voices and lived experiences of minoritised people, especially children and young people. The decision to rename the Strategy to “Race Relations” clearly sets the tone of the framework and marks an intentional shift away from promoting and embedding equality and human rights standards into our society. 

Barnardo’s Northern Ireland calls on the Executive Office to withdraw the Draft Framework for Race Relations and instead engage in meaningful co-design and co-production with people who have lived experience of racial inequality, discrimination, and harm, and produce a Race Equality Strategy that explicitly addresses the systemic barriers to equality in our public services, is fully costed and actioned to tackle the barriers, with clear and enforceable accountability mechanisms, and centres lived experience.