A. The public sector equality duty came into force on 5 April 2011. Scottish Ministers propose that there should be ‘specific duties’ related to this. This consultation is about revisions to draft Regulations that have already been looked at, mainly refining the proposals for impact assessment, monitoring and reporting. Responses by 25 November 2011.

B. Every four years the UK’s overall human rights record is considered by the other countries which are members of the United Nations Human Rights Council in a process called Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The next review of the state of human rights across the UK will take place in 2012. The government is required to submit a full report and other interested stakeholders are invited to submit their own submissions.

If you wish to submit information to be considered in the next ‘stakeholder report’, the deadline for submission to uprsubmissions@ohchr.org is currently set at 7 November 2011. The Scottish Human Rights Commission was informed of the deadline only very recently and is in communication to express concern at the very limited time this will permit to engage civil society.

To find out more about the UPR process in general the Commission recommends that you might want to take a look at the United Nations website on UPR or at the extensive materials (including templates for civil society submissions) prepared by the Irish Human Rights Commission when Ireland underwent the same review process recently.