UN Committee asks UK for update on key children’s rights issues

Date: 1st March 2021
Category: Reporting to and monitoring the UNCRC

Children's Rights in Scotland

The ‘List of Issues Prior to Reporting’ (LOIPR) highlights many of the concerns that Together members raised in our 2020 report to the UN Committee. The LOIPR will form the basis of the UK and devolved governments’ review by the UN Committee in 2022. 

Together’s report identified 30 key issues for children in Scotland. It drew upon evidence gathered during our State of Children’s Rights Webinar Series in which over 500 people took part.

In the recently published LOIPR, the UN Committee asks the UK and devolved governments for more information on a range of topics, including: 

  • Children’s participation in decision making.
  • Awareness and understanding of children’s rights.
  • Protecting children from all forms of harm, including violence, abuse, inappropriate use of restraint and environmental harm
  • Children’s access to justice and children’s rights in detention.
  • Compulsory collective worship in schools.
  • Raising the minimum age of marriage to at least 18, criminal responsibility to at least 14 and recruitment into the armed forces to at least 18.
  • Children affected by parental imprisonment.
  • Rights of disabled children.
  • Family support and childcare.
  • Care experience, including sibling contact.
  • Child poverty and health inequalities.
  • Education, including the digital divide.
  • Support for child victims and witnesses of crimes, including the Barnahus model.
  • Rights of asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children.

Unfortunately, some issues highlighted in Together’s report were not picked up by the UN Committee. This included support for young carers, access to high-quality play spaces and play-based learning in the early years. Together will continue to advocate for these issues to be addressed in future stages of the UK’s review.

  • Read Together’s submission to the UN Committee on challenges children in Scotland experience here.
  • Read the report on the issues facing children across the UK here.
  • Read the UN Committee’s response in full here.