Jen has kindly written this blog for the Foundation as our Strengthening Civil Society programme (law and social change) undergoes a review after 10 years funding in this field. She’ll be joined by other contributors with views from England, Northern Ireland and Wales over the course of 2025.
A look back: the past five years
Scotland has been a dynamic, exciting place to work at the intersection of law and human rights, over the last decade. It has been hard to choose, but here are five major changes to our human rights landscape, which give a flavour – but not the entire picture – of what we’ve seen over the past five years in Scotland.
Expanding protections for survivors of domestic abuse
The “groundbreaking” Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 expanded the definition of domestic abuse to recognise the experiences of survivors of psychological and emotional abuse, including coercive control. The Act also recognise children in domestic violence cases as “victims” and not merely “witnesses” to harm. Five years on, women and children participating in the Domestic Abuse Court Experience Project have reported that – despite many barriers still preventing survivors from accessing justice – they feel the new law better reflects their own experiences of abuse, including the impact of abuse for child survivors of domestic violence.
Ending unlawful detention of people in care homes
In 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission took NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Council to court to legally challenge the practice of keeping elderly patients locked up in care units for up to a year without their consent, while waiting for a welfare guardian to be appointment. They successfully challenged this as a breach of Article 5 ECHR (right to liberty) and Article 8 ECHR (right to family and private life), and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde agreed to end this unlawful practice.
Fighting for immigration justice in our communities
During Eid al-Fitr in 2021, two Sikh men living in Kenmure Street, a row of tenement houses in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow, were taken from their home and detained by the Home Office in a van on the street. In response, neighbours and community advocates surrounded the van and started a sit-in protest – chanting “these are neighbours, let them free,” which lasted for eight hours, ending in the release of the detained men. The Kenmure Street protests were a watershed moment in public support for migrant rights in Scotland, reaffirming the spirit of the Glasgow Girls over a decade earlier, when seven 15-year-old girls campaigned successfully against Home Office dawn raids in Scotland after one of their teenage friends was detained.
Widening access to higher education for young people
In 2022, JustRight Scotland acted for an aspiring young doctor, whose family had fled to Scotland from Iraq when she was 11 years old but had been locked out of free tuition for university because of her migration status. She and her family were facing significant financial hardship to support her studies. The Scottish Government’s student financial assistance regulations were declared to be unlawfully discriminatory under Article 2, Protocol 1 of the ECHR (the right to education).
The following year, as a result of successful campaigning by JustCitizens, the Our Grades, Not Visas campaign, and Maryhill Integration Network, access to education funding was extended not just to young people in the petitioner’s position, but also to unaccompanied child asylum seekers and the children of asylum seekers – an example of how a human rights legal win for just one person can widen access to justice many thousands of others.
Making rights real for all children in Scotland
In December 2023, the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill was unanimously passed by the Scottish Parliament, making good on the promise of Scottish Government to civil society campaigners to “make rights real” for children in Scotland. Whilst the Act came into force in July 2024, the first case was not decided under the Act until January 2025 – when the High Court in Edinburgh ruled that the Lord Advocate’s power to prosecute children lies within the scope of the new Act.
And looking ahead to the next five
Over the last few years, we also have seen significant change in political leadership, with three different SNP First Ministers serving over the past two years, and are expecting a very dynamic year in politics, leading up to our Scottish Parliamentary elections in autumn 2026.
In particular, we have seen a reluctance for the current SNP government to see through some of the most ambitious and forward-thinking commitments made by the previous government including last week’s decision to shelve the Misogyny Bill and Conversion Therapy Bill and a stubborn silence on the future of a long-anticipated Scottish Human Rights Bill.
Looking ahead, here are some opportunities that Government and civil society must grasp to continue to realise the promise of law to build a fairer and more equal Scotland:
Defend the rule of law and mechanisms of state accountability
Over the past few years, we have seen attacks by UK Government Ministers on the rule of law and the role of lawyers – immigration lawyers in particular – in defending their clients against harmful state policies. Here in Scotland, as elsewhere across the UK, it is important for Government and civil society to counter – with words and action – attempts to weaken mechanisms of state accountability as part of a global trend towards authoritarianism.
That means supporting an independent judiciary, ensuring the independence and resourcing of government regulatory agencies, and inviting challenge and inquiry from thriving and independent civil society, academic and media sectors.
Use the law to uphold people’s rights in court
Although we still eagerly await news of a Scottish Human Rights Bill, the UNCRC (Incorporation)(Scotland) Act 2024 (the UNCRC Act) remains an exciting opportunity to extend remedies to children in Scotland for violations of their rights in novel and impactful ways. JustRight Scotland, for example, has launched a case in December 2024 on behalf of a family of travelling show people in Govan facing eviction from their home. This is the first use of the UNCRC Act in a civil case in Scotland, based on an argument that the rights of the child in the family were not taken into account, and eviction would breach her right to a secure home.
Cases like this demonstrate the continuing importance and relevance of international human rights norms in making rights real for people when they are litigated in domestic courts, on important issues, close to home.
Widen access to justice by tackling legal aid reform
The Scottish Government continues to push slowly ahead with reform of its public legal aid system and this month, the Scottish Parliament’s Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee has called for views as part of its Legal Aid Inquiry. Law centres across Scotland, as well as the Law Society of Scotland and civil society organisations, have provided a wealth of evidence of why the system is in need of reform, and practical direction towards change.
Access to justice is a fundamental aspect of a fair and functioning democracy, and also underpins respect for the rule of law and legitimises the role of law in society. Legal aid reform has the potential to widen access to justice for people who are currently locked out of recourse and remedy, making the law and legal systems more relevant and real in people’s day-to-day lives.
Fund radical solutions to poverty, homelessness and inequality
The Scottish Government’s 2025-26 Programme for Government, announced in early May 2025 focuses on eradicating child poverty and features commitments beyond the Scottish Child Payment to offset the impact of UK Government austerity measures like the two-child limit and the benefits cap. This, together with a renewed focus on expanding social housing, would make for a welcome set of radical solutions that begin to address the hardship and inequality that the least wealthy in Scotland have experienced following on from the economic impacts of Brexit, Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis.
Using the law – whether in the courts or through campaigning and legislative change – to ensure that Scottish Government’s commitments to reduce poverty and homelessness remain ambitious and radical enough to meet today’s economic challenges, whilst also providing inclusive solutions suitable for all people in Scotland, will deflate popular support for more exclusionary solutions to financial crisis.
Build communities grounded in common values, sustainability and the equal dignity and worth of community members
We have seen an increasing recognition across civil society organisations in Scotland, and across the UK, that we have lost ground over the past decade because of the erosion of community connections, coupled with an increasing public scepticism of politics and political leadership. There is a risk that a loss of community connection with lead to greater divisiveness on key social issues, and that public scepticism will lead to disengagement with political processes.
In this context, an opportunity exists for Government and civil society to push for investment in community building work that prioritises local connections, for example, a new Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, and new ways for the public to engage with political processes, like a Citizens Assembly for Scotland. Law centres like the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland continue to do innovative and groundbreaking work to ensure, for example, that communities have a right to participate in making environmental laws.
Finding new ways of building community connection, creating environmentally-conscious economic relationships and recognising the equal dignity and worth of community members at a local level is a strategic, sustainable way of ensuring that our future communities grow to be fairer, healthier, wealthier and more inclusive places than they are today.
And that’s a wrap! Thank you for taking the time to sit with me through this whirlwind look back over the past five years, and forward towards the next five.
Scotland has faced such an array of challenges over the past five years – including the impact of Brexit, Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis – and yet, these years have also yielded creative, thoughtful and impactful advances in the law and human rights. With national elections scheduled for autumn 2026, the next five years also have the potential to offer dynamic and exciting opportunities for those who are interested in using the law for social change. Let’s make the most of the interesting times that we have been given to – to take the words of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr. – help to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.