Outreach work of the Commission

Outreach Coordinator, Jemma Neville, describes the Commission's Outreach work.

JN:

"Hi I’m Jemma, I’m the Outreach Coordinator for the Commission, which is a fantastic role because I get to go and hear people’s stories and hear about how human rights affects their everyday lives.  It’s really important that you tell us the good and the bad, and what matters to you because it’s your Commission. How your children get on in primary school, whether you’ve got access to transport ,whether you’ve got play areas near you, how your granny gets on in the care home. These are the issues, the everyday issues that matter to us, so please tell us. And if you’ve got something interesting or a bit different or challenging in your workplace and you want us to come in and see it and ask us about it, then get in touch as that’s what we are there for.

Because we’re Scotland’s human right Commission we really want to link up a network of individuals and communities who deal with human rights in their everyday work and in their community lives. So, if you’ve got a story or a challenge or problem that you want to share with us or get our advice from, we can help you identify where the rights holders are in that situation and who the duty bearers are and come to a common framework of moving forward in that challenge ,and that’s what we’re there for. 

This human rights network, this human rights in practice, how human rights actually affect everyone in real life, not just the legalese  in the courtrooms and not just the fancy UN treaties, you know what does it actually mean to be in a fairer and more dignified , respectful Scotland? That’s what we’re about and that’s why we’re your Commission. 

Human rights are actually about how you feel in your community, about what makes you feel that you are treated with dignity and respect and with fairness, so actually it’s about the very everyday things. It’s about your provision of bus services in a local rural area, it’s about how your elderly grandmother gets on in a care home. Whether you feel that her views are taken into account, that she’s treated with dignity. It’s about how many hours you have to work in the workplace and whether you feel that you’re treated as an important part of that organisation. So you know these are, it’s, it’s very, it’s mundane, its everyday things it’s about the things that matter. And that’s why Scotland has its own Scottish Human Rights Commission. So you have to tell us about your issues, we want to hear about the good stories in particular. But we’re also here to help sort out where you’ve got issues, and it’s about embedding a culture of human rights into Scotland. Something that Scotland’s actually very good at anyway. You know ‘it’s no fair’ that that’s in our language.

We’re really lucky in Scotland that young people are actually pretty clued up about human rights. We can’t underestimate just how much people already know about what their rights are both domestically and further afield through the UK’s international human rights obligations. So, it’s really important that we harness that enthusiasm for learning more about working and living in a fair and tolerant place. And, I think for us as a Commission, human rights is not just an end in itself but a means and it’s about a way of learning. So we’re hoping to work with schools and a whole host of education providers to help underpin ways of learning that are inclusive that are fair and are tolerant and by referencing that to treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. So that’s great and we’ll work with colleagues throughout Scotland, who have local knowledge of doing that. "