Overview of the Act
3.The Act incorporates into Scots law the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (“the Convention”), an international human rights treaty covering all aspects of children’s lives including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
4.The Act provides for rights and obligations derived from the Convention, and its first 2 optional protocols, to be given effect in Scots law in the following ways:
	it places public authorities under a duty not to act incompatibly with the UNCRC requirements as defined in section 1, and provides legal remedies should they fail to do so (Part 2);
	it places public authorities, when exercising certain functions, under duties to publicly account for their compliance with, and efforts to go beyond, the UNCRC requirements – in particular it places the Scottish Ministers under a duty to produce, and periodically report against, a scheme setting out what they are doing to comply with their duty in relation to the UNCRC requirements and places a duty on certain other public authorities to produce periodic reports on their compliance with those requirements (Part 3);
	it requires statements to be made, when certain types of legislation are brought forward, about the legislation’s compatibility with the UNCRC requirements (Part 4, section 23);
	it requires that legislative words (whenever enacted) originating from the Scottish Parliament be read wherever possible in a way that is compatible with the UNCRC requirements and, where a compatible reading is not possible, it allows the courts to either (depending on when the incompatible words were enacted) strike the words down or make a declaration of their incompatibility (Part 4, sections 24 to 26);
	it sets up procedures for the courts to address questions about the compatibility of legislative words or public bodies’ actions with the UNCRC requirements (Part 5);
	it enables the Scottish Ministers to change the law, by regulations, to cure incompatibilities (or potential incompatibilities) with the UNCRC requirements (Part 6).
5.Provisions in the Act fall to be read in accordance with the interpretation rules in Part 1 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.