Commission to study Highlands human rights experience

The Scottish Human Rights Commission has launched a project to find out how human rights are being experienced across the Highlands and Islands.

With its duties including the monitoring of human rights in Scotland, in 2023-24 the Commission will focus and report on what is happening to people’s economic, social and cultural rights in these areas of Scotland.

Evidence previously gathered by the Commission has highlighted issues of particular human rights concern in rural areas of Scotland, including lack of affordable and quality housing; limited access to sufficient and nutritious food; inaccessible health care services; fuel poverty; access to technology or poor internet connectivity; poverty related attainment gap in education; and transport connectivity to essential public services and supplies.

The Commission has therefore taken the decision to take a deeper look at these potential human rights denials to understand more about how economic, social and cultural rights are being experienced in the Highlands and Islands.

Its project will involve four stages:

• desk based research and literature review of existing published evidence;
• community visits to speak directly to people and learn about their experiences;
• accessing information on trends of complaints made to MSPs and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman; and
• analysing all the information under human rights obligations and issuing a final report with recommendations to the relevant authorities.

Community visits, involving third sector organisations, local authorities and MSPs as well as individual community members locally, will take place in Lerwick, Kirkwall, Thurso, Wick, Dingwall, Inverness, Elgin, Stornoway, Tarbert, Ullapool, Portree and Dunoon during October and November 2023.

A final spotlight report will be presented to the Scottish Parliament in spring 2024.

Jan Savage, executive director of the Commission, explained: “The Commission wants to understand the human rights issues affecting people in rural areas across the Highlands and Islands. We are focusing on economic, social and cultural rights, which includes how the Government provides essential services to people for things like housing, health, education, culture and environmental rights.

“We have been approached by members of communities in the Highlands and Islands who are concerned about lack of affordable housing, high levels of food insecurity and difficulties in accessing medical services in rural areas.

“Through our treaty monitoring work to the United Nations, we have found that there is a lack of information and available data, specific to the Highlands and Islands, in comparison to the rest of Scotland.

“As part of our monitoring role on human rights, we will be investigating this situation further and establishing if public authorities are doing enough to provide essential services and support for people in rural areas to access their economic, social and cultural rights.”

Find the list of meetings here. To find out how to attend, please email research@scottishhumanrights.com