Meeting of the Parliament 08 December 2022
I entirely agree with Martin Whitfield. It is surprising that a Government that in previous years has been so vehement and passionate about children’s rights should be silent on them. Indeed, the same happened when, with much fanfare, the Government took us from being one of the worst countries in the world in holding children as young as eight responsible for their crimes to a country where, under the Age of Criminal Responsibility (Scotland) Act 2019, the age of criminal responsibility was raised to 12. However, at the same time, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child lifted the international floor to 14. That was an embarrassment, because we still have an age of criminal responsibility that is lower than those defenders of human rights, Russia and China. When it comes to human rights, we cannot lead the world from the back of the pack.
I realise that I must close, Presiding Officer, but the fact is that we need to take human rights seriously when we are considering, say, whether to sign a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese company with a dodgy human rights record. I remember when Alex Salmond refused to meet the Dalai Lama for fear of upsetting Chinese diplomats.
The slogan of international human rights day is “Stand up for human rights”. Today, we celebrate human rights defenders in their entirety, whether they be in Hong Kong, faraway Isfahan or here in Scotland. It is not enough simply to acknowledge the progress that we have made or the progress that we still need to make; instead, we need to fight for it, individually and collectively, without prejudice and without borders. Only then do we uphold the equality and freedom with which we are all born.