'THE report resonates with people in Highlands and Islands because they feel heard, listened to, taken seriously,” Angela O’Hagan, the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission shares with a sense of liberation and pride.
“Their voice is amplified by the national human rights institution, taken seriously in a way that they maybe hadn't been or felt they hadn’t been taken before – and that's really, really important.”
O’Hagan (pictured) tells the Sunday National there was a sense of relief from those working at the commission when they knew the report had been welcomed by key rights holders, and when members of the Scottish Parliament, as well as local council members, proactively reached out.
Researchers had begun interviewing and visiting people in the Highlands and Islands to collate and witness evidence on their human rights in April 2023. Before the team was an immense amount of geographic space to cover as well as mountains of paperwork.
So, no wonder O’Hagan feels liberated to talk about the report and reaction one month after its release.
The landmark report highlighted everyday aspects of everyday lives that are just made so much harder for people in the Highlands and Islands because obligations of the Scottish Government and other authorities are not being met.
Some of the key findings included: Women having to travel hundreds of miles to give birth, or for forensic examination after sexual assaults; a significant number of people being homeless, with some living in conditions of rooflessness, without shelter or temporary accommodation; climate change more frequently impacting food deliveries; a lack of shops available to buy clothes in certain areas; increasing social isolation; funeral poverty; barriers to accessing justice, and school catchment areas spanning up to 500 miles.
Others, however, questioned if “human rights” as a phrase was correct for issues facing those in the Highlands and Islands, and asked whether it was more suited to war zones.
“We do tend to think of human rights as remote and exotic and war zones and humanitarian crises. But the report gives us the opportunity to say human rights are absolutely about our everyday lives and about people's everyday lives, and that's what this report really homes in on,” O’Hagan says.
“The right to food, the right to clothing, the right to adequate, available, and accessible healthcare.”
The report took 10 years’ worth of recommendations from international and domestic scrutiny bodies and used a traffic light system to categorise how successfully they were being met.
There are 29 recommendations for the Scottish Government, and the Commission looked at evidence to see the extent to which those recommendations were being met.
And after looking at the 29 obligations, 24 are still sitting on red – “does not meet obligations”.
What can the Scottish Government do?
THE Scottish Government and duty bearers have an obligation to ensure that the right to housing, the right to food, to clothing, to healthcare, to education and the right to work are all met.
O’Hagan, who was most recently a professor of equality and public policy at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that taking a human rights-based approach can mean seeing all of that delivered to the public in a rounded and strategic way.
Despite Scotland having a “strong narrative of progressive social policy”, O’Hagan says this way of thinking is not rooted across Government and civil service thinking – which could be a shortcut to addressing interrelating issues at once, amid a cognitive overload and scarce resources for officials.
First Minister John Swinney also delayed the long-awaited Human Rights Bill for Scotland until at least 2026. The Scottish Government has been contacted for comment.
O'Hagan said: “If the Scottish Government is serious about the mainstream in human rights, which is something that we've been hearing about for a very long time, then they need to take very seriously what they need to do, and that is very clear direction from the First Minister, across Cabinet, from cabinet secretaries to the ministers, down through the directorates, and to address the level of comfort that there is with the quality of engagement in human rights.
“At the moment, it's rendered into more of a tick box than a starting point, than a mindset, and so that's what needs to happen if they're serious about mainstream strategy that's actually going to have some bite, rather than be a nice to do.”
In the spotlight report, the Commission created a framework: Here's the rights, here's the law, here's the evidence that says the extent to which the obligations are being met, here's what the treaty requires, and here's what the committee's observations and recommendations have been over the years.
O’Hagan says: “We use this framework for analysis, but those in a local authority, a health board, the Scottish Government, can also use this framework to think diagnostically, look into what's the problem, and then prognostically, to work with everyone.”
What is next for the Scottish Human Rights Commission?
THE team is set to travel again to the Highlands and Islands in February and March to deliver a series of community empowerment events.
The purpose of these new engagements is to share the findings and enable human rights defenders working locally to use human rights to advocate for change in their communities. The Commission will also be offering to meet with public authorities to provide support and capacity, building on how to take a human rights-based approach.
Events will take place in the following areas and dates:
- Lerwick: February 10
- Kirkwall: February 13
- Thurso: February 17
- Wick: February 18
- Tongue: February 19
- Lairg: February 19
- Kinlochbervie: February 20
- Lochinvar: February 20
- Ullapool: February 21
- Stornoway: February 24
- Tarbert (Harris): February 26
- Uist/Benbecula: February 27
- Barra: February 28
- Portree: March 10
- Fort William: March 11
- Oban: March 12
- Inverness: March 17
- Dingwall: March 19
- Elgin: March 20
- Dunoon: March 25
- Colintraive: March 26
All details can be found here.
The Commission will be expanding the monitoring model to other areas of Scotland over the next three years, starting with the south of Scotland in 2025.
"I think it will be very interesting to see what issues are similar. What issues are similar to how they experience them and in what magnitude, in scale? Or are they different?" O'Hagan questions.
She gives an example: "One of the things I'm most interested in is the reality of remoteness, so people in the Highlands and Islands might have to travel two hours each way for a large supermarket, but that might not be exactly the case in south of Scotland or the Borders – but some of the same challengers could be seen in housing, employment, and accessing healthcare like local GPs."
O'Hagan also advocated for the Scottish Parliament to hold regular debates on reports from the Commission, after Labour MSP Rhoda Grant secured one – potentially the first on a report published by the Commission.
She says: "That debate happened last week [January 16], and and I think it was really powerful for people to see members of the Scottish Parliament engage and to focus and drill in on our work and how important it is to hear the Scottish Human Rights Commission engaging in the way that we are, and to get time to focus on the realities of people's lives."
