Professor Angela O'Hagan

In a new assessment of poverty as a human rights issue, the SHRC calls on the Scottish government to pull together its existing commitments on child poverty, public service reform and human rights law into a coherent, rights based approach to ending poverty.

In Poverty and Human Rights in Scotland: How can human rights be used to alleviate poverty?, the SHRC outlines evidence that people in Scotland are facing human rights violations, including to the right to food, healthcare and to adequate housing.

The SHRC calls on the Scottish government to:

• Make public service reform deliver for people in Scotland
• Make reducing poverty a key outcome of public service reform
• Close the gaps between poverty and access to justice
• Commit to a human rights based approach to budget decisions
• Require public bodies to commit to a human rights based approach to decision making and service design
• Set clear, achievable but ambitious targets that prioritise lifting people out of poverty
• Commit to a Human Rights Bill that provides a clear and enforceable route to alleviate poverty and provide pathways for accountability and access to justice.

Professor Angela O’Hagan, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, said: “Almost a million people in Scotland are living in poverty. People are hungry. People are homeless or living in inadequate housing and cannot access vital services like healthcare and social security. This is a serious human rights issue. The Scottish government and other public bodies are failing to meet their human rights obligations.

“Poverty is not inevitable, it is the result of policy choices. Using a human rights framework gives a clear, practical and non-political framework to guide the decisions of policy makers and public service leaders. As Scotland’s National Human Rights Institution, we are calling on the Scottish government to take a deliberate and focused human rights based approach to eradicating poverty.”