Scottish Government responds to UPR recommendations

Date: 12th December 2017
Category: Scotland-specific monitoring and reporting

Scottish Government has published its response to the UN Human Rights Council's recommendations following the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UK's human rights record in Geneva in May.

This response to UN Human Rights Council recommendations describes key features of Scotland's performance against international human rights obligations and how the Scottish Government intends to make substantive progress in areas highlighted by the Universal Periodic Review.
Following an interactive dialogue in Geneva on 4 May 2017, the UN Human Rights Council made 227 recommendations for the UK. The formal UK Government response was submitted to the Human Rights Council in August 2017 and has been published on the UN web site.

As well as UPR recommendations, the response addresses the concluding observations issued by UN treaty monitoring bodies following their reviews of the UK under human rights treaties during the 2012-17 UPR cycle.

Background

The UK Government has previously been criticised by human rights groups and the UN Human Rights Council for only supporting 96 of the total 229 recommendations from the UN's review of the UK's record on human rights. This is only 42% of the total, whilst the average across other nations is to accept 67% of recommendations. The government chose to "note" the remainder. Along with other organisations, Together called for greater engagement across the UK from the UK Government in taking forward the UPR recommendations.