Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2019
As we have heard, human rights defenders are on the front line of conflict. In fighting against human rights abuses, they put their lives and safety at risk to protect the human rights of strangers. They refuse to walk on the other side of the road—they are modern-day good Samaritans. It is very apt that we are having this debate today, when the exhibition that is display outside the MSP block is on human rights breaches in Syria. It is a moving and harrowing exhibition, and I thank the all-party parliamentary group on Syria for bringing it to the Scottish Parliament.
As many members—including Fulton MacGregor, Ruth Maguire, Alexander Stewart, Rona Mackay, Joan McAlpine and Bill Kidd—have mentioned, although the UN brought in its declaration on human rights defenders in 1998, since then more than 3,500 human rights defenders have been killed. An average of 170 are murdered every year, with 300 having been killed in 2017. Some unscrupulous national authorities and rogue states are targeting human rights defenders and their organisations all the time in an effort to prevent them from carrying out their work. That includes imposing restrictions on funding, freezing assets, imposing travel bans, carrying out reprisals against defenders’ families, and using surveillance and smear campaigns.
Although international relations are, by and large, a reserved matter, Scotland has taken clear steps to support human rights work. Mention has been made of the establishment of the Scottish human rights defender fellowship, which I and many other members strongly support. The fellowship offers support mechanisms, including through providing respite in a safe environment, enabling defenders to broaden their network and share research, and raising the visibility of the work that is carried out.
The German Bundestag has taken that approach one step further by adopting a model of patronage in which each parliamentarian has taken on one individual who is at a high level of risk. They advocate on the person’s behalf and follow developments in their case. Support is also being provided to the families of those who have been imprisoned.
As I said last week—so, that is two weeks in a row—the minister set a positive tone in her opening speech, and I strongly support that. It is vital that we consider the bigger picture.
As Elaine Smith said, the Labour Party has a proud history of promoting and defending human rights across the world. She mentioned the campaign against the two-child cap in universal credit, which is clearly against the human rights of women in this country, and we continue to campaign for the right to food to be enshrined in Scots law. On the international stage, the UK Government under Labour intervened in the Balkans, and was widely credited with avoiding widespread genocide and human rights abuses.
The bigger picture is that we need to reform the international rules-based order so that we secure justice and accountability in order to avoid breaches of human rights such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria. It is unbelievable that we are still having to fight against so many flagrant breaches of human rights across the world in 2019, but fight on we must.
As Martin Luther King said in an open letter in 1963,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
16:41