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Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2013

10 Dec 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Human Rights

Chisholm, Malcolm Lab Edinburgh Northern and Leith Watch on SPTV

It is particularly important that we are debating Scotland’s first human rights action plan on international human rights day and the day on which we remember Nelson Mandela—although I am sure that we will always remember him. He said:

“As long as women are bound by poverty and as long as they are looked down upon, human rights will lack substance.”

He was addressing the pervasive gender inequality and oppression that is one of the two most widespread human rights abuses throughout the world. The other abuse that he referred to is poverty, and in other contexts he would have emphasised the poverty of men as well as the poverty of women.

Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, narrowed it down further when he said that violence against women and girls is

“perhaps the most pervasive violation of human rights across the globe”.

I had intended to talk about that in the debate but, a few minutes before the debate, I discovered that we are belatedly going to have a debate on violence against women next week, so I will make just two summary points on that.

First, four significant points are made in the action plan about violence against women. It states that additional measures to tackle human trafficking are required and that legal protection is disparate, so we need to consider several issues around that. The plan says that domestic abuse courts

“should be replicated, with appropriate support”;

that is an important recommendation. It also reflects on concerns about access to legal aid for those seeking remedies for domestic abuse. That is an important part of the action plan.

Secondly, I briefly back up what Jenny Marra said. She has been a passionate and empathetic campaigner on the issue of female genital mutilation, as on other issues, and she was quite right to highlight the omission of that issue from the plan. It emphasises a more general point about human rights. There has been no greater supporter of multiculturalism than me when multiculturalism has been under attack from many people in the UK, but we should remember that human rights always trump multiculturalism. Even if female genital mutilation or some other human rights abuse is accepted in some cultures, that does not make it right. We must always remember that human rights come first.

I mentioned poverty. Article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family”,

although it should say “himself or herself”. Interestingly, the ECHR does not include a specific right to a minimum standard of living, which might be—actually, I am sure that it is—a weakness of that convention. I am glad that the action plan has interesting actions and recommendations on that issue, including on a human rights action group on standard of living, which will involve the Scottish Trades Union Congress and others. That is an important development. There are lots of other interesting suggestions, such as that on a human rights-based approach to taxation. I look forward to the conclusions on that.

I have one minute to go in my speech, and I have a lot to cover. Health and social care has come up in the context of the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Bill. It is good to see a human rights approach being recommended on that, particularly the idea of independent living being a basic human right for disabled people. There is an interesting reference to health inequalities being seen through the human rights lens, which is another fruitful angle.

I have 30 seconds left. The tricky area is that of human rights and justice issues. Of course we need more emphasis on victims, and we will come back to that issue on Thursday, but the accused has rights, too. I welcome the fact that reforms had to be introduced as a result of the Cadder case. Alex Johnstone mentioned the most difficult area, which is the human rights of people in prison. They rightly have certain rights taken away, but they also have certain rights that should be preserved. We need more debate and discussion on that, but it is not an argument for abolishing the Human Rights Act 1998. It is important—this is my final sentence—that fundamental human rights are embedded in law, but we must act on them, and I hope that the action plan will help us to do that.

15:11

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Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2013

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