Entries by category: Human Rights

How well does Australia treat its international students?  At the recent Australia and New Zealand Race Relations Roundtable, Human Rights Commissioners heard about many instances of racial harassment, abuse and violence directed at international students. Many areas of concern need to be addressed, including rights to non discrimination, equality of treatment, security of the person, access to justice, housing, information, freedom of religion and culture and labour rights.  The Commissioners resolved to:

"After the perfect storm: Indian students in Australia" by Janaki Bahahur, Lowy Institute for International Policy, 12 October 2009 documents some of the experiences of Indian students studying in Australia.  Additional media reports can be found on the ABC website.  Just type in "Indian students" and you will find reports of incidents involving indian students during 2009.

In early 2007, following a series of revelations about the level of child sex abuse in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, the previous Federal Government  announced and legislated for the implementation of a series of emergency measures.  This became known as the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention.  You can read the key legislation that introduced this intervention on the Australian Parliamentary Library Indigenous Affairs website, under Northern Territory Emergency Intervention.

In March 2009, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination requested that the Federal Government take urgent action to ensure that this new legislation complied with the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Human Rights Law Centre wrote a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin on 10 November 2009 urging them to immediately reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) to apply to all measures of the Northern Territory Intervention.

If you have a reader's card for the State Library of NSW, you can find more articles in the media on Proquest ANZ Newsstand dealing with the Northern Territory Intervention.  Type in "northern territory intervention".  They include:

• "The Northern Territory intervention and the Racial Discrimination Act" by Renata Grossi (2009) 31 (3) LegalDate 11-13;
• "Response and responsibility" by Richard Mohr (2009) 7 (11) Indigenous Law Bulletin 15-18; and
• "downunderallover:developments around the country" (2009) 34 (2) Alternative Law Journal 129-136

The ‘The Protection and Promotion of Human Rights in Australia’  was released on 8 October 2009.  There is a summary included with the report.  The report is a large document and to read it online you need to click on the 'downloads' link. 

In December 2008 the Rudd Government asked the National Human Rights Consultation Committee to examine the protection and promotion of human rights and responsibilities in Australia.

The Committee conducted the most extensive consultation on human rights issues in Australia’s history, receiving more than 35,000 submissions and conducting over 65 community roundtables and public hearings across more than 50 urban, regional and remote locations.

The report contains 31 recommendations and provides important information about what we do well and assesses options for addressing the areas where we can do better.

Overwhelmingly, the report finds that Australians support the protection of human rights, however, most of the debate surrounds the way these rights are protected.  What the research has identified is that there are many views on how human rights and responsibilities should be protected, promoted and realised, including on the merits of a Human Rights Act.

Importantly, it has also shown that there are many other important ways to protect and promote human rights including, for example, through enhanced education and improved parliamentary scrutiny.

The Attorney-General released a public statement at the same time as the launch of the report which outlines the key findings and states the Australian government's intentions to carefully consider the Committee's report and outline its response in the coming months.

George Williams responded to the report with a piece in the SMH 'A clear voice crying dignity for our fellow beings' on 9 October 2009.

Numerous articles have been written in the media in response to the release of this consultation report.  You can do a search on Proquest Australia and New Zealand Newsstand, a database of fulltext newspaper articles.  You need to register as a client of the State Library.  Set dates to after 1 October 2009 and type in 'human rights and Brennan'.  (Just typing in 'human rights' will get too many hits.)

The Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has come into force in Australia as of 20 September 2009.  This protocol provides a mechanism for Australians to make complaints to the United Nations Disabilities Committee in the event that all domestic remedies have been exhausted.

The Convention was ratified in July 2008.  The Convention has also been declared under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 to enable the Australian Human Rights Commission to conciliate complaints based on breaches of the Convention.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has useful information on this Convention and the rights of people people with disabilities.

 David Kilcullen, a world expert in counterterrorism spoke at the Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture at the University of NSW.  He said that the Government of Afghanistan was losing to the Taliban because it was being out-governed, rather than out-fought.  Taliban survives through rule of law provides a useful summary of this lecture. Taliban forces have introduced 15 Sharia Law courts operating at the local level where they are imposing their rule of law more effectively than the Government,  making decisions about family matters, water and grazing disputes, and inheritance issues. 

The World Report 2009 produced by Human Rights Watch have identified that Afghanistan is experiencing its worst violence since the fall of the Taliban government.  They highlight the  plight of the ordinary Afghan people as a consequence of a weak government who is unable to assert its control and provide a safe environment so that they can enjoy basic rights.

Human Rights Watch have written extensively on human rights issues in Afghanistan, including: the lack of schooling for girls, barriers to women working outside the home, the wearing of the burqa, the practice of 'bacha bazi' (the keeping of boys as sex slaves), lack of freedom of expression, and the lack of independent media reporting.