Rights and Equality West Midlands is not a recently established regional organisation, but the nine-year-old Race Equality West Midlands, with a new name and extended vision, although it retains its old acronym, REWM.
The Equality Act 2006 set out arrangements for the dissolution of the Commission for Racial Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunity Commission and replaced them with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which opened for business in October 2007.
The EHRC has duties in relation to social groups classed by age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion and belief and sexual orientation. The new commission is required to promote good relations between all these groups, and to eliminate prejudice, discrimination and hatred expressed towards them, so that they can fully participate in society. It must also monitor the effectiveness of equality and human rights law and measure the progress being made towards achieving equality.
Rights and Equality West Midlands, a voluntary sector body, part-funded by the EHRC, has repositioned itself to participate in the drive to develop innovative ways of working across the various strands of equality for which the new commission is responsible.
While there are risks in neglecting traditional areas of expertise, REWM believes that the new approach to equality promotion within an overarching framework of human rights, holds out exciting possibilities for improving the lives of all the social groups covered by anti-discriminatory legislation.
Under its new name, REWM will continue to promote equality by providing professional services to government, public authorities, and the private, voluntary and community sectors, through leadership, strategic policy development, research, education and learning, and projects that tackle discrimination and improve the quality of people’s lives.
Research
Recent REWM research reports available on our website include:
Ethnic relations in schools and communities. Towards a community cohesion strategy for schools (July 2007).
Encyclopaedia of contemporary British community cohesion policy (October 2007).
Promoting race equality and community cohesion through Local Area Agreements (September 2007).
Muslim community relations post 9/11: a chronology (February 2008).