The UN Just Slammed Australia’s Abysmal Human Rights Record As “Off The Charts”
We had to be told it's "unacceptable" to "pick and choose" human rights to support.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has just slammed Australia’s human rights record as containing “very little to be proud of”, saying our “chronic non-compliance” with the Committee’s findings and recommendations is so low as to be “completely off the charts”.
This is all in the same week that Australia was elected to the UN Human Rights Council, where it’s meant to act as a human rights leader.
The blistering take on our human rights record also comes the day after the UN’s peak refugee agency declared an “imminent humanitarian crisis for refugees and asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea” and called on Australia to urgently respond to address the “extraordinary human toll” of its offshore processing policies. Other human rights failings the Committee singled out included rates of domestic violence, Australia’s lagging transgender and intersex rights, and anti-terrorism laws.
Regarding the postal survey on same-sex marriage, a Committee member noted that “human rights are not to be determined by opinion poll or a popular vote”, lending UN backing to what LGBTQI Australians have been saying for years.
UN expert to Australia: "Human rights are not to be determined by opinion poll or a popular vote." #AusICCPR #MarriageEquality #LGBTI
— Emily Howie (@EmilyHowie) October 18, 2017
The non-compliance the Committee is talking about includes Australia’s failure to implement many UN human rights recommendations, such as the recommendation to evacuate asylum seekers from offshore detention centres that are in breach of the UN Convention against Torture, and the recommendation to compensate members of the Stolen Generations. On these issues, Committee Vice Chair Yuval Shany said it is unacceptable for Australia to “pick and choose” and “self-judge” which human rights recommendations it implements.
The Committee’s criticism of Australia comes as part of one of its routine reviews of Australia’s human rights performance. While Australia has also been slammed in past, this review is particularly significant given that it comes in the same week that Australia was elected to the UN Human Rights Council. Members of that Council are supposed to act like human rights leaders, and Australia campaigned for the seat by touting a lot of crap about being a total human rights legend.
Today the UN gave Australia a grade of E – and that’s not an E for effort. #AusICCPR #HRCtte https://t.co/B8OpycSRH9
— Amy Frew (@AmyHRLC) October 18, 2017
On the contrary, as Human Rights Law Centre lawyer Amy Frew said of the proceedings today, “Today the UN gave Australia a grade of E – and that’s not an E for effort. The condemnation shows how far we have strayed from the promises we made to uphold the civil and political rights of Australians and people in our care”.
As for how we fix this, it should be pretty straightforward — we can begin by evacuating the offshore processing centres on Manus and Nauru, and then continue listening to the recommendations made by the world’s peak body for human rights. As John Quinn, Australia’s ambassador to the UN, put it, there are things we “could do better”. No shit.
The Committee’s review into Australia will continue today, and its official findings will be released on November 9.