Can talking about 'dignity' support the growth of human rights culture? A view from Scotland

Webster, Elaine; (2022) Can talking about 'dignity' support the growth of human rights culture? A view from Scotland. In: Human Rights Strategies. Edward Elgar Publishing. (In Press)

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Abstract

This chapter maps connections and interactions between human rights law, values, culture, and strategy, and draws out new insights for understanding human rights implementation. It uses the Scottish context as a contemporary window on an ambitious human rights strategy. Since 2018, a participatory legal reform process has been underway to support progressive development of a stronger national human rights culture. This process has enabled connections that are collectively relevant for understanding human rights implementation: incorporation of international human rights law into the domestic legal framework; explicit recognition of respect for human dignity as a key value; acknowledgement of the need for widespread ownership of human rights; and a focus on delivering effective human rights outcomes. Drawing on this context of localised human rights practice, this chapter offers a granular picture of ways in which human rights strategy manifests and has an impact at a local level. From a socio-legal perspective, it analyses data on civil society actors’ views of the role of dignity language in supporting the strategic growth of a human rights culture. The analysis shows that research on human rights strategy should be concerned with the power of language and the perspective of human rights ‘strategists’. At the same time, it suggests that research on human rights practice should pay attention to the conceptualisation of actors involved in implementation processes and questions of ‘framing’ in strategic communications. These findings suggest that the empirical lens of localised human rights practice provides valuable insights for understanding the development and attributes of human rights strategy, while the conceptual lens of the human rights strategy idea provides valuable insights for understanding localised human rights practice. The chapter thereby concludes that, to gain richer understandings of implementation, exploring strategy through the empirical lens of localised practice is useful, and vice-versa.

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