JHL opposes taking equality promotion plans away from day care centres

Eliminating racism and discrimination in early childhood education and care will become more difficult if day care centres are not required to draw up their own equality promotion plans in the future, as the Finnish Government proposes. JHL has issued a comment on the government proposal, pointing out furthermore that taking these plans away will not actually reduce the work in municipalities.

The Finnish Government has made a proposal to amend the Non-discrimination Act so that each day care centre would not have to draw up their own equality promotion plan in the future (link in Finnish).

In the proposal it would be enough that for example all day care centres in a municipality have one shared equality promotion plan. This change would make it harder to eliminate racism and discrimination in day care centres. The Government published in 2023 an anti-racism statement (in Finnish), where it declared that it promotes equality and non-discrimination in Finland. The proposal to remove the obligation to draw up equality promotion plans conflicts with the goals of this statement.

Removing the obligation to create these plans will also not significantly reduce the workload in municipalities, since day care centres will still have to create gender equality plans. This obligation is based on the Equality Act.

JHL points out that the Government has not followed good law drafting practice when this legislative proposal was submitted for comments. It was announced in the middle of the summer holiday season, and the commenting time was only a little over four weeks. At least six weeks should be reserved for commenting. This instruction is in the guidelines for hearing stakeholders in the law drafting process (in Finnish).