Justice, Rights and Remedies: empowering Gypsy Traveller communities using oral traditions to influence the right to an effective remedy in Scotland

Scotland is incorporating economic, social and cultural rights into devolved law, including the rights to housing, food, health and cultural life. The justice framework in Scotland is not yet equipped to deliver effective remedies for a violation of these rights. JustRight Scotland has called for recognition of the right to an effective remedy.

This PhD uses emancipatory arts based methodologies to situate the voices of Gypsy Traveller communities in legal and policy reform. It asks what an effective remedy means in law and whether indigenous oral traditions provide new insights that counter dominant framings of justice in practice.

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, food and an adequate standard of living. Scotland will incorporate ESCR into devolved law in a new Human Rights Bill (2024). Research demonstrates that the justice system is not yet equipped to provide effective remedies for ESCR violations (Boyle et al 2022; Clements 2020).

This means that when the system comes into force, it is not clear how justice will be delivered when something goes wrong. This is a significant gap. JustRight Scotland (JRS) is an organisation that addresses the legal needs of disenfranchised communities.

It has identified access to justice as a strategic priority, in particular for groups who experience structural injustice (Young 2011), including the Gypsy Traveller communities (GTC). JRS have publicly called for the right to an effective remedy for a violation of ESCR to be available under the new Scottish framework (Ang 2023). In this PhD we propose for these processes to be led by the lived experience of GTC by engaging with oral traditions using arts-based methodologies.