Addressing systematic and clustered injustice in the right to independent living in Scotland

The UK has signed up to international human right treaties that protect the economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) of everyone in the UK including the rights to housing, health, an adequate standard of living and the right to independent living (Article 19, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities).

However, the UK has not incorporated these rights into domestic law, meaning there is no legal recourse to a remedy (Boyle 2022).

The clustered and systemic violation of rights further exacerbates this accountability gap (Clements 2020; Boyle & Ferrie 2022; Boyle & SHRC 2023).

People experience a multitude of overlapping problems relating to housing, welfare provision, health etc. (clustered injustice) and the pervasiveness of violations are often system-wide (systemic injustice) for example, through repeated errors in decision-making or support services that are not fit for purpose (Landau 2012; Garavito & Franco 2015).

In Scotland, the Scottish Government is incorporating ESCR into domestic devolved law in order to close this accountability gap.

This offers the opportunity to explore potential solutions to the justice gap in a jurisdiction that is committed to addressing clustered and systemic injustice but does not yet have the supporting evidence and research on how best to achieve this (Boyle & Camps 2022).

The Scottish Human Rights Commission has identified the right to live independently in the community as a priority area where clustered and systemic injustice is pervasive. This research project aims to directly address this gap.

The student will engage with front line complaint handlers using critical discourse analysis to examine how power operates to facilitate or restrict complaint resolution, and thus the right to an effective remedy.

A lived experience advisory group will operate throughout the project to examine the evidence for authenticity allowing experience of truth, to counter narratives of power.