A young person’s guide to defending human rights

ABSTRACT

While Scotland has an increasing commitment to children and young people’s rights, there remains a lot to be done to ensure all children and young people’s rights are recognised. Two young activists share their learning from being part of the children’s rights community and particularly the Scottish Universities Insight Institute’s seminar series in 2017. They write of the opportunities in Scotland, from supporting organisations to engagement directly with government ministers and other key decision-makers, for children and young people to participate and influence change. They note the dilemmas for young activists of balancing the different parts of their lives, from work to school to personal and family. They conclude that all children, young people and adults need an increased vocabulary for and awareness of children’s rights and more systematic engagement and consideration of children’s rights in policy decision-making processes. They look ambitiously to the future, where all children have this process of learning about their rights and the opportunities (but not the requirement) to engage meaningfully with decision-makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• young people
• children’s rights
• participation
• duty-bearers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Joel Meekison is a Human Rights Activist, an Ambassador for the Year of Young People 2018 in Scotland, and the #iwill campaign. This has enabled him to advocate for children and young people’s voices to be incorporated into the decision making process, and take part in the Together’s SUII seminar series on incorporation of the UNCRC. In his roles Joel has worked closely with many organisations, including Young Scot, Children in Scotland and has worked closely with UNICEF on their work in Scotland. He currently sits on Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Panel on Europe which advises Scottish Government Ministers and recently hosted an event at Scotland House, Brussels to look at sharing best practice from Scotland’s Children’s rights sector to a European context. In addition to his activism, Joel is a second year public relations, and communications student at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

Suki Wan is the current Chair of the Scottish Youth Parliament and has been the elected Member for Glasgow Shettleston since March 2015. In addition to her local constituency work, Suki has been involved in national activities advocating for young people’s rights at a national level including contributing to Together’s SUII seminar series on incorporation of the UNCRC, meeting with the Scottish Cabinet to call for incorporation, sitting on the Joint Strategic Board for Equally Safe (the Scottish Government’s plan for eradicating gender-based violence and discrimination), and sitting on the First Minister’s National Advisory Council for Women and Girls. Suki has also represented SYP in Geneva at the UN Day of General Discussion on Children’s Rights to present on the role of youth parliaments in democracy. Outside of youth representation, Suki is a 3rd year student studying Politics at the University of Glasgow with ambitions to work in the charity sector after graduating.

Notes

1 This refers to a school that is part of the ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ accreditation of UNICEF. For more information, see https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/.

2 For more information on the Scottish Youth Parliament and MSYPs, see https://www.syp.org.uk/,https://www.syp.org.uk/.

3 For more information on the Children’s Parliament, see https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/.

4 For more information on the UK Youth Parliament, see http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/.

5 For more information on the Year of Young People 2018 in Scotland, see https://yoyp2018.scot/.

6 For pictures of the mural and further information, see https://sciennesnewsflash.blogspot.com/2017/06/uncrc-art-project-with-together.html.

7 This issues are discussed and defined in Payne, Hoffman, Byrne and Lundy, this issue.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute seminar series.