by Hyo Eun Shin from the CAS Strong Communities team.

This article was first published in The Herald on 23rd May 2026.

Fifty years ago this week, on 20th May 1976, the United Kingdom ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This landmark human rights treaty recognised what is essential for everyone to live well: a safe home, food and water, education and fair work, healthcare and social security support when we need it. 

By accepting a legal obligation to uphold these everyday rights, the government of the time looked beyond electoral cycles and laid an important foundation for a more just and peaceful society for generations to come.  

However, a crucial next step is still missing to this day. Though ratification made ICESCR binding on the UK in international law, it needed to be written into our own legal systems through legislation before it could actually be enforceable. And this never happened. It’s high time it did. 

Properly incorporating ICESCR into our domestic law would fundamentally transform people’s relationship with government and public authorities and ensure that anyone can actually enforce these rights in our courts. This month’s election presents a new opportunity to do that in Scotland. 

And it badly needs to happen. Every day Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABs) across Scotland support people who cannot rely on these basic rights and are experiencing devastating harm as a result: families in unaffordable and unsafe housing, neighbours forced to go hungry, people who cannot access the care and support they need. 

CABs are strongholds of local connection and solidarity, empowering individuals to claim their rights and campaigning for solutions to structural failures that we can only address together. But it would be so much easier if these rights were legally enforceable. 

The new Parliament needs to incorporate ICESCR, so that all levels and branches of government - from ministers to local authority staff, from police to courts, from care homes to schools - are fulfilling their legal duty to progressively realise these essentials with us and for us. So that we can count on decision-makers to uphold everyone’s dignity and – crucially - so that we can hold them to account where they fall short.

Fifty years after ratification, we cannot wait any longer for this step. Citizens Advice Scotland supports the Scottish Government’s renewed commitment to introduce a Human Rights Bill which includes these rights. And we stand ready to actively assist in developing such a bill.  

This week we also joined forces with a broad coalition of organisations across the UK in a joint civil society letter to the Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy. Coordinated by the organisation Just Fair, we are calling on the UK Government to commit to a clear and time-bound process to bring these rights home into UK law and policy. 

While policy areas such as education, health and housing are devolved to Scotland, UK-wide legislation would help avoid limitations arising from the complex constitutional setup between Holyrood and Westminster and strengthen these everyday rights for everyone across the UK.    

Both governments must act now so we can fortify the foundations of a good life for all of us now and into the future. Five decades is surely long enough to wait.

by Hyo Eun Shin, CAS Strong Communities team. 

This article was first published in The Herald on 13 December 2025.

When I first moved to the UK from Germany, I was struck by a vibrant culture of giving and receiving cards. From births, relationships, and anniversaries to new jobs or the loss of a loved one, people exchanged cards to mark all types of key life events; sharing goodwill, compassion, and love. Cards held wishes and aspirations for the new year and other annual festivities that carry deep meaning, often proudly displayed in people’s homes.  

Among the huge variety of cards however, I’ve never been able to find the one that I think deserves celebrating with everyone - International Human Rights Day on 10 December.  

Coming out of the shadows of WWII, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by people with various cultural and legal backgrounds from different parts of the world. Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, this milestone document set out fundamental human rights that were to be universally protected to secure peace, justice and freedom for everyone everywhere.  

Since then, human rights have been enshrined in international and regional human rights treaties. Countries around the world - including the UK – worked on and ratified them, bringing some into domestic law, helping people to hold the powerful to account.  

Human Rights legally recognise the everyday essentials we need to live our lives with dignity. This includes the right to a safe and warm home, food and clean water, and adequate clothing; and to the best attainable standard of mental and physical health and the right to social security. It also includes the right to learn and access education, and to work and be treated fairly at work. 

Interdependent with these rights are the right to life, to freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of expression, assembly, religion or belief, rights to non-discrimination, access to justice, and to equality before the law. Our human rights are there to guide government and public bodies and protect us from laws, practices and actions that deny us our human dignity.  

Every day the Scottish CAB network supports people in their local communities to realise these rights and to help when they are not met. Our free, confidential and person-centred advice empowers thousands of people across the country to realise their rights. People like Joanne who was stuck in a cold, mouldy home, worrying how to afford food and give her baby a healthy start in life. Like Mark whose disabled son was in prison and could not access his medication. Like Sarah who was at risk of being declared incapable of managing her own affairs and being sent to a care home against her will.  

Last year, CABs across Scotland supported people with challenging decisions and practices by public authorities, from social security providers, local authorities and the NHS, to the police, prisons and schools with more than 65,000 pieces of advice. In addition, our network continues to campaign and advocate for changes that will uphold and strengthen our everyday rights.  

So, I think it’s high time we all sent a Happy International Human Rights Day card to mark this key event and remind everyone why we all deserve to live with dignity and happiness.  

All of this innovation comes with risk because we’re working with new and relatively untested technology. The privacy of people who use our services is really important to us, so developing expertise around data protection and ethics has been a key enabler to these projects. The right to privacy is one of the areas of human rights that will come under increasing threat as a result of AI.  

So we’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting data protection right by minimising the data that goes into AI tools and pseudo-anonymising it where possible, making sure the data doesn’t leave our systems, and only using AI tools that we trust are secure. We also weigh up the benefits that any tool can deliver with any potential risk before letting it near live data. We believe this is important work because AI is not going away and it has the potential to make an enormous difference to the way we work and the benefits we can deliver for the people of Scotland.  

We can get this right, but the key point I will be making at the conference is that we will never do anything that will compromise on the cherished values of trust, integrity and confidentiality that have been our watchwords for 85 years. 

Article by Aoife Deery of the CAS social justice team. First published in The Herald on 28 September 2024.

Tuesday’s grim new statistics on homelessness in Scotland came as little surprise to anybody working in the housing sector.The housing emergency shows no signs of easing. Indeed it is becoming entrenched and enduring.

Across Scotland, councils are operating under very difficult circumstances with very little resources. Like everyone else, they’re facing new challenges, new costs and a new post-COVID landscape.

More people need social, affordable homes for rent because they’re priced out of home ownership and private rents, or are constrained by social security that doesn’t meet the actual cost of living. More of the same responses won’t work. We welcome new acquisition funds for councils to buy more homes but much more bold and urgent action is needed.

We need a re-invigorated social house-building agenda, and better support for people to access and stay in their homes. To deliver this, we need to look at different forms of finance. A national housing agency could enable us to take a wider view of things and be tasked with delivering the homes that are needed. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: there has to be an emergency response to an emergency situation. The emergency will not end without it.

Article by Hyo Eun Shin of the CAS Strong Communities team, first published in The Herald on 31 August 2024.

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’”

The world of work has moved on from the days when Dolly Parton’s song ‘9 to 5’, an upbeat critique of Corporate America, first became a hit. Since then, there have been many hard-won improvements in workers’ rights in the UK, such as the introduction of a national minimum wage and legal protections against discrimination in the workplace.

If you’ve been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against at work, had your wages withheld or been denied rest breaks, accessing an Employment Tribunal should not come at a cost.  

In 2013, the UK Government introduced fees for Employment Tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunals. This coincided with a significant fall in cases brought to Tribunals and was found to have been unlawful and was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2017. However, prior to the recent General Election, the UK government at the time proposed to re-introduce fees to the Employment Tribunal system.  

This clearly isn’t right. Tribunal fees would make it even harder for workers to access justice and protect themselves against unlawful practices. People are already facing multiple hurdles to pursuing a claim: legal aid solicitors are scarce in large areas of Scotland, and while Trade Unions might be able to help, many people can’t find solicitors with employment law expertise. So while employers tend to be represented by legal professionals, workers often end up facing their employer on their own – disadvantaging them from the outset.