Northern Ireland racism strategy being undermined – review

Dr Zazai, who came to the UK as an asylum seeker from Afghanistan in 1999 and was awarded an OBE in 2022, told BBC News NI it had been a “privilege” to meet many people working to build bridges in Northern Ireland.

But he said any “strategy is (only) as good as the actual actions being taken”.

“There are resources invested but not clearly aligned to a strategy,” he continued.

Dr Zazai praised Northern Ireland as a “fantastic place” that had “opened doors to people from other conflicts, fleeing, seeking protection and safety”.

However, he said the absence of a power-sharing government at Stormont for a number of years had “created a bit of a governance and political vacuum for racial equality to be supported in that period”.

He also said there had not been enough input from people with “lived experience” and that should be included in any new strategy from 2025 onwards.

The civil servant who drafted the 2015 strategy, Kenneth Fraser, previously told BBC News NI that he was critical of how it had been implemented.

In his written review, Dr Zazai praised the “energy and commitment” of civil servants in The Executive Office in “creating an equal society for all”.

He said many people in Northern Ireland were working “mostly behind the scenes to build bridges and bonds across communities”.

But, he wrote, there had been substantial change in Northern Ireland since the strategy had been approved in 2015, particularly with the continued arrival of new people due to crises in Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong, together “with more people seeking asylum dispersed by the Home Office”.