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xLaunch of Together’s #RightsOnTrack campaign for World Children’s Day
Date: 16th November 2023
Category:
General measures of implementation, General principles
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has given the Scottish Government a lengthy ‘to-do’ list (almost 200 recommendations) to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Let’s get children’s #RightsOnTrack ahead of the next review by committing to specific recommendations and advocating for duty bearers to translate them into action! Read on to find out how you can get involved!
Background
This year, Together submitted it’s State of Children’s Rights Report 2023 as a Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (‘the Committee’), ahead of it’s review of the UK and Scottish Government’s compliance and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘UNCRC’). Together, in partnership with Children’s Parliament, Scottish Youth Parliament and Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland supported a group of children and young people #TeamScotlandUN to travel to Geneva to give further evidence on the state of children’s rights in Scotland and speak about the issues of most importance to them.
This resulted in the UN Concluding Observations – almost 200 recommendations made by the Committee to the UK and Scottish Government to implement the UNCRC. Very many of these drew upon issues that children, young people and our members had raised.
The ‘to-do’ list to get children’s #RightsOnTrack
While the UN Committee recognised areas of real progress since its last review in 2016, it was clear that far more needs to be done to address gaps in children’s rights protection.
The #RightsOnTrack campaign is all about making sure that the Scottish Government, local authorities and other duty bearers do what’s needed to ensure all children and young people in Scotland experience all of their rights all of the time. Through our campaign, we’ll be raising awareness of these recommendations to uphold children’s rights. The UN’s recommendations don’t cover every issue, however, so it’s very important that we work with our members to draw attention to all the things that need to change–whether they’re on the UN’s list or not.
Children and young people said that everyone should know about the UN’s recommendations and each person should understand what they need to do to put them into practice. They also said that it might help if people had a guide to the UN Committee's recommendations as if they were on a journey. This is why we chose the name #RightsOnTrack, symbolising a train journey through these recommendations and the progress we make toward safeguarding children's rights.
- Find Together’s child-friendly version of the UN Concluding Observations here.
- You can find out more about the Concluding Observations and the recommendations made by the Committee here.
How to get involved
#RightsOnTrack will be a multi-year campaign that keeps up the pressure on Scottish Government and other duty bearers to put rights into practice.
If you would like to get involved then please join our #RightsOnTrack community! Sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date.