Progressing the human rights of children in Scotland: update report 2021-2024

Conclusion

We have made important progress in our journey to making Scotland a country that respects, protects and fulfils children’s rights. It should be clear from this report that, while the Scottish Government has led on this work, it has done so in partnership with many other organisations, public authorities, a strong children’s rights sector, and children and young people.

This report is not intended to provide an account of the role that these many partners have played, and continue to play, in embedding children’s rights in Scotland, but the Scottish Government’s appreciation for this is recorded in the Foreword from the Ministers for Children, Young People and The Promise.

Going forward, the actions that the Scottish Government will take to embed children’s rights will be set out in the Children’s Rights Scheme that will be published in early 2025. Progress on these actions will be reported on an annual basis, rather than once every three years (which was the reporting cycle under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014). More frequent reporting will help ensure that we maintain momentum on commitments and our children’s rights journey.

Alongside this, we will also report on the progress that we are making in strengthening rights across a wide range of policy areas. We set that out most recently (in March 2024) in the Scottish Government’s Initial Response to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s Concluding Observations for the UK State Party, and have committed to doing so again in 2026.