“To call for the Scottish Government and local authorities to take a Human Rights Based Approach to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Every year, the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) delivers a national campaign which focuses on a major issue affecting young people in Scotland. SYP’s campaigns are normally selected from our youth manifesto, shortlisted by the Conveners Group, and selected by MSYPs at the June Sitting. However, due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Board and Conveners group agreed to make some changes to SYP’s 2020-21 National Campaign. Instead of selecting a new campaign topic from our Lead the Way manifesto, we agreed to focus our next campaign exclusively on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.
The campaign will use evidence from LockdownLowdown, our manifesto research, and committee motions from SYP72. It will be member-led, focusing on grassroots actions, empowering MSYPs to advocate for their constituents as Scotland recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The overarching aim of this campaign is:
“To call for the Scottish Government and local authorities to take a Human Rights Based Approach to recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
We will do this by:
- Identifying the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on different groups of young people, particularly those in vulnerable or seldom-heard groups, across Scotland.
- Demonstrating the positive impact a human rights based approach could have on Scotland’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Empowering MSYPs to lead and participate in community action activities which support young people in vulnerable groups.
Our campaign focuses on five areas of young people’s lives, which the pandemic has particularly affected. All of these issues are underpinned by young people’s access to our rights:
We believe a human rights based approach to recovery will have a positive impact on young people during the recovery process, because it will:
- Make rights real for young people.
- Make sure young people have opportunities to take part in decisions that affect them.
- Empower young people to know and claim their rights,
- Enable young people to hold people who are responsible for upholding their rights to account.
- Bring about a culture that values dignity, respect, tolerance, open-mindedness, and diversity.
