What did the UN say about UK’s track record on human rights?
Every 5 years, the UN Human Rights Council reviews a country’s record on human rights. This is called the Universal Periodic Review.
Civil society organisations can submit evidence to this Review. In Nov-Dec 2021, we worked with the Scottish Human Rights Commission to hold a series of workshops to make sure we could home in on priority issues for human rights in Scotland. You can read the final Consortium evidence to the UPR here.
The UN’s review of the UK then took place on 10th November. They have issued a draft list of recommendations to the UK.
Click here to read the draft list of recommendations
We joined with other UK wide organisations to call on the UK Government to take these recommendations seriously.
Click here to read our joint statement
We have also had a look to compare what was recommended by the UN, to the issues that we raised with them. The recommendations given are broad brush but correlate with several key recommendations raised by the Consortium. However, there were also significant gaps. These include on rights for disabled people, women, people with learning disabilities, and mental health, and on economic, social and cultural rights.
A lot of HRCS’s recommendations focused on Scotland and Scottish Government policies. Although the work of Scotland was highlighted at the UPR, there was no specific Scottish recommendation. However we can assume through recommendations to the UK, that many of these recommendations still apply to Scotland as devolved matters.