Working in a global environment means equality and diversity is at the heart of DFID’s business, both in terms of our workforce and our work – reducing global poverty through reaching the Millennium Development Goals, the international targets agreed by the United Nations (UN) to halve world poverty by 2015.
Poor people experience discrimination and social exclusion and some of the world’s poorest people are for example women, or people with disabilities. What makes them poor is the discrimination they face because of their sex, or disability. DFID is determined to reduce the inequalities of opportunity we see around the world today.
The current UK legislation (Equality Act 2010) places a duty on all public sector organisations to:
Although the law does not technically apply in our work overseas, there is a clear business case to drive the integration of equity and fairness in everything we do. Increasing our capacity in understanding, valuing and applying diversity means we will do our work even better.
DFID’s commitment to diversity and equality means providing a work environment for all employees that is welcoming, respectful and engaging, with opportunities for personal and professional development. By maximising the potential of everyone, we will bring diverse skills to the work place that in turn increase productivity, quality, creativity and innovation, and make DFID an employer of choice; hence Diversity is one of our core values. We will take account of and embed equality and diversity when working to improve poor people’s lives and influencing key development issues globally.
The Diversity Team has a predominantly strategic and developmental role in helping to drive the equality and diversity agenda forward. You can contact the Diversity Team by emailing diversity@dfid.gov.uk.
DFID’s work in equality and diversity is also guided by the Civil Service Equality and Diversity Strategy, Promoting Equality, Valuing Diversity. The strategy provides a framework against which all departments and agencies take actions and measure performance in diversity and equality. It aims to embed equality and diversity across the Civil Service and drive progress towards a long term aspiration for the Civil Service to be representative of the society it serves by 2020.
Equality screening allows us to embed equality and diversity within the organisation and ensure we pay due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, promote equality and foster good relations between people of different groups.
DFID carries out equality screening to make sure our policies, programmes and decision making processes are fair - to think carefully about the impact on different groups of people, particularly under-represented groups and anticipate/meet the needs of people with protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation).
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