The FAIR approach - putting a human rights based approach into practice

These materials will help you apply a human rights based approach in practice.

The Scottish Human Rights Commission has developed what we call the ‘FAIR’ approach to help you do this. The basic steps of the FAIR approach are:

• Facts: What is the experience of the individuals involved and what are the important facts to understand?

• Analyse rights:Develop an analysis of the human rights at stake

• Identify responsibilities: Identify what needs to be done and who is responsible for doing it

• Review actions:Make recommendations for action and later recall and evaluate what has happened as a result.

The FAIR flowchart, explained in the next section and found in the icon at the top of this page, outlines these steps in more detail and you can use the film scenarios and case studies in the following sections to familiarise yourself with putting the steps into practice.

Not every unfair situation will be an abuse of human rights law. Often using the FAIR approach, however, can be a means of reaching a balanced and just solution in those situations.

The role of a human rights based approach is to ensure that the dignity of the individual is at the centre of policy and decision making. Where it is applied everyone affected will have an opportunity to help think through how human rights can best be realised in the delivery of care and support services.