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Human rights principles require that Indigenous people's relationships to land, based on traditional laws and customs, be given legal recognition and protection. International legal principles also recognise that Indigenous peoples have economic, social and cultural human rights. Native title, as it is constructed through the Australian legal system, has a limited capacity to meet these human…

The table of recommendations contains 31 recommendations that build on reform processes which began in the late 1990s. They are designed to realise the unfulfilled potential of ADFA. The recommendations contained in the table are critical to drive cultural change in the treatment of women at ADFA. The table begins with a number of high-level reforms necessary to lift the status of ADFA and…

International and Australian evidence demonstrates the long-term effects of early life experience on health and well being throughout life. The detention of children and young people is poses significant risks to normal development. The exposure of infants and young children to stress either directly or mediated through the experiences of their parents reduces the likelihood of normal brain…

Access an activity that provides examples of when the rights of children have been denied and what action would be appropriate in order to protect them.

Mr Calma is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula in Northern Territory, respectively. He has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local, community, state, national and international level and worked in the public sector for over 30 years.

Adoption is the transfer, generally by order of a court, of all parental rights and obligations from the natural parent(s) to the adoptive parent(s). In Australia, legal adoption is relatively recent. It was first introduced in 1928 in Victoria, for example. Until very recently adoption involved near-total secrecy, partly in deference to the desire of adoptive parents to present the child as…

The Australian Human Rights Commission would like to thank all the people who generously contributed their stories, artwork, poetry and time to make this publication possible; Jo Ritale and Angelo at the State Library of Queensland and the communities of Cherbourg, Mapoon Mission,  Monamona and Mornington Island for giving us permission to reproduce photographs from the State…

Over the last year, the Commission has confirmed its strategic focus for the next 3 years. A new Strategic Plan was introduced from 1 July 2011 for the period to 30 June 2014. The 4 strategic goals for the period focus on:

The Social Justice Report 2002 discusses initiatives currently underway or in development at the federal, state and territory levels in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. The report commends the following positive developments in Indigenous policy:

Complete an education activity (sheet 5) designed to raise awareness of human rights by giving students a set of questions and answers to match correctly.

Many of my clients (while I was working as a Child and Adolescent Counsellor with STARTTS June 2000 - January 2002) refused to talk about their experiences in Australian Immigration Detention Centres. In addition, several mothers only let me see their children for counselling on the condition that I not raise their Australian Detention experiences as it would distress them too much and they do…

Along with its human rights education and promotion function, the Commission undertakes a monitoring role in relation to human rights standards. This monitoring role ranges across the work of the individual Commissioners who examine and report issues of race, sex and disability discrimination and human rights, to the assessment of legislative proposals and presentation of submissions through the…

To gather participants from government, employer representative bodies, private employers, disability employment and service agencies and other interested and expert organisation to discuss the desirability and possibility for establishing an information and advice service modelled on the US Job Accommodation Network.

back to immigration detention, asylum seekers and refugees The human rights of people who are in immigration detention are of particular concern to the Commission. Liberty is a fundamental human right, recognised in major human rights instruments to which Australia is a party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child…