Scottish Human Rights Law Group

Zoe Picton-Howell

Zoe qualified as a solicitor in England, after training with one of the large London commercial firms, practising commercial litigation and media law and acting particularly for German speaking clients doing business in the UK. She then became a partner and head of litigation and employment law at a growing London firm, where again she specialised in acting for international clients.

After moving to Scotland in 2001 she developed an interest in the rights of children living with disability in the UK. She obtained a LLM in Human Rights Law from Glasgow Graduate Law School (Strathclyde/Glasgow universities) which included a dissertation examining whether children with severe disabilities in the UK have human rights, for which she obtained a distinction. She is currently researching a PhD at Edinburgh University’s law school, which combines human rights law with medical law and ethics in an examination of what the law can bring to difficult medical decision making for the UK’s disabled children.

She frequently speaks to various audiences on the subject of disabled children’s rights and works with both statutory and voluntary bodies to raise awareness of and address the human rights breaches which disabled children and their families encounter on a daily basis in Scotland and the UK generally.

She is on the Scottish National Council of Contact A Family; a member of NHS Lothian’s Disability Equality Steering Group; a lay observer for the Care Commission and has recently been appointed a director of the Scottish Alliance for Child Rights.