Looking ahead to 2025: a critical year for human rights in Scotland

This blog originally featured in the Amnesty Scotland newsletter for activists.

A word from Amnesty Scotland's Programme Director Neil Cowan

The start of any new year offers the promise of renewal, hope and optimism. But there is no escaping that the start of 2025 will have tested the optimism of all of who care about defending and protecting human rights.

Every day we continue to witness the ongoing horrors in Gaza where, despite the overdue ceasefire offering a glimmer of relief to Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide, a halt in fighting cannot even begin to repair the shattered (and lost) lives or heal the trauma and devastation of what has gone before.

And every day we see the implementation of the harmful and racist policy agenda of the new US President, with his recent proposal that the US will “take over” the Gaza Strip representing nothing more than a proposal to commit war crimes.

Closer to home, the first few weeks and months of 2025 have seen a ratcheting up of divisive rhetoric by the UK Government in relation to asylum and immigration, while in Scotland there was the news that the number of children living in temporary accommodation in Scotland is now at its highest-ever level.

But all of that – the attacks on human rights and the effects of human rights violations – simply underlines that the work of the Amnesty International movement is as important, if not more important, than ever before. As the world’s largest grassroots human rights movement, we know that it is up to us not just to defend human rights when they are under attack, but to create the renewal, hope and optimism that is needed to create the kind of change – and the kind of world – that we all believe in.

Here in Scotland, 2025 is a critical year in making that change happen. With the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections on the horizon, our mission as the Amnesty Scotland team is to ensure that human rights are front and centre not just of the election campaign, but of the next Scottish Parliament’s entire agenda.

One of the ways that can happen is through the long-awaited Human Rights Bill, which would place four international human rights treaties into Scots law, helping to make all of our rights a reality. Initially promised for last year, the Scottish Government then pushed the Bill into the next Parliament.

Regardless of who forms the next Scottish Government, it is vital that the Bill is not just delivered but that it has the widespread support needed to implement it in a way that can be genuinely transformational for people and communities across Scotland – and key to making that happen will be Amnesty activists and supporters across the country.

So this year, while there may be challenges, it is incumbent on all of us not just to defend human rights when they are under attack, but to work together to push for the those victories – like the Human Rights Bill – that are within reach. By doing that, we really can begin to build the Scotland, and indeed the world, that we want to see.