Better Culture

"People understand and can affirm human rights and organisations are enabled and accountable to put human rights into practice."

There are a growing number of examples of human rights being put into practice in Scotland but these are not yet the norm. SNAP itself demonstrates an important commitment from a range of organisations towards achieving a sustainable human rights culture.

Under this outcome we aim to harness, build on and channel that enthusiasm, focussing on how to achieve a better human rights culture in practice, learning from the best of experiences from across Scotland and the world.

Achieving a better culture involves working towards three priorities:

  • Empowerment - increasing people’s understanding of human rights and their participation in decisions.

  • Ability - increasing organisations’ ability to put human rights into practice.

  • Accountability - increasing accountability through human rights based laws, governance and monitoring.

Better Culture Action Group

An Action Group is taking forward work in this area. Co-Convened by the Scottish Human Rights Commission and Scottish Government, members are Amnesty International UK, Care Inspectorate, City of Edinburgh Council, CoSLA, Engender, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Consortium Scotland, Independent Living in Scotland Project, Office of Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, Police Scotland, Scottish Councils' Equality Network and See Me.

Progress and future work

Year one focused on bringing together a wide-ranging set of organisations and people to discuss and identify priorities and opportunities for action, securing initial commitment to joint working in two key areas:

Raising awareness of human rights through public communications

A pilot social media campaign - #OurRightsSNAP - took place to mark SNAP's first anniversary and International Human Rights Day, 10 Decemeber 2014.

A bigger awareness raising campaign, funded by the Scottish Government and shaped by Action Group members, will take place in the run-up to SNAP's second anniversary and International Human Rights Day, 10 December 2015.

Bringing people and organisations together to explore innovative approaches to building a better culture

A pilot "Innovation Forum" will take place in partnership with Perth and Kinross Council in September 2015. With preparatory sessions for local people whose rights are affected in practice, and local public authorities with duties to respect, protect and fulfil rights, the Forum will hear from good practice examples around Scotland and will work to develop a local action plan to build a better human rights culture.

The process and methodology developed, lessons learned and outcomes from this pilot will be captured and shared with other local authorities, and at a national level, as part of the longer-term roll out of SNAP.

The Action Group will continue to develop actions to address the gaps and opportunities to increase empowerment, ability and accountability that were identified in SNAP. This will involve joint working with other SNAP Action Groups.


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