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<p>The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is committed to promoting diversity and
inclusion for all its employees. The FCO's management information system shows that,
out of the 246 Senior Management positions overseas, 80 members of staff have declared
their religion. Of these, three are Muslim, which corresponds to 3.75% of those who
declared and 1.22% of the overall total.</p><p> </p><p>All FCO UK based staff are
asked to provide diversity information about their ethnicity, disability status, sexual
orientation and religion or belief. Supplying this data is voluntary. The FCO is working
to improve diversity declaration rates by staff, including for religion and belief,
and as part of this effort a three month campaign titled “Why Should I Tell You” was
run between November 2013 and January 2014 to encourage staff to provide their diversity
information. Over this period declaration rates for religion and belief increased
from 31 to 35%.</p><p> </p><p>The FCO launched the Black and Ethnic Minority (BME)
Campaign in Summer 2013 aimed at the recruitment, progression and development of BME
staff. The campaign aims to improve young people's understanding of the organisation
and to encourage more applications to our fast stream, particularly from BME communities.
It also includes a leadership programme for high performing BME staff to prepare them
for senior management and other targeted career development courses, mentoring and
coaching. The initial results have been very encouraging.</p><p> </p><p>The FCO publishes
an annual Equality Report which provides information about the diversity and makeup
of our staff, as required by the Equality Act 2010. The 2014 report can be accessed
at: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/diversity-and-equality-report-2014"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/diversity-and-equality-report-2014</a>.</p><p>
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