Search results

On Saturday 29 July 2000 the then Human Rights Commissioner, Mr Chris Sidoti, assisted by a consultant, Dr Mary Crock, Senior Lecturer in Law at Sydney University, visited the Curtin Immigration Reception and Processing Centre outside Derby in the Kimberley region of WA. They made observations and obtained information about accommodation, programs and services, and particulars about the conditions and treatment of detainees. This report documents Commissioner Sidoti's observations and the information he obtained with Dr Crock's assistance.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that around half of the 50 million displaced persons in the world are children. Around 10 million of these children are under the care of UNHCR. Approximately 100,000 separated children roam Western Europe.(1) During 1999 alone, more than 20,000 separated children applied for asylum in Western Europe, North America or Australia.(2) Of those 20,000 unaccompanied children, 46 travelled to Australia to seek asylum. In the same year a further 202 children sought asylum in Australia with their families.(3)

2.1 Scope of international obligations During Australia’s review, the Government made a commitment to improving Australia’s monitoring of its international human rights obligations. Australia is a party to seven of the core human rights treaties and maintains a number of reservations under these. The Australian Government made a commitment to conduct a comprehensive review of such reservations by ...

Barnardos Australia is a family support and out of home care children's welfare agency operating services in New South Wales and ACT. We make this submission based on a number of detainee children and young people that we have provided services for within their own families, and as homeless adolescents. Furthermore, Barnardos has general experience of the impact of institutional care of children and young people, and children living with uncertainty and stress. We have proved specialist support services to refugee Indo-Chinese young people who have experienced detention in refugee camps.

We commend HREOC for instituting this Inquiry and thank them for giving us the opportunity to make input on an issue which is of grave concern to the Co-operative which, for 23 years has been advocating for the rights and needs of immigrant children and their families in a diverse multicultural society.

An entrenched pattern of disadvantage and dispossession continues to wreak havoc and destruction in Indigenous families and communities. This situation has been described in the preceding chapters of this Part. State and Territory legislation, policy and practice in the areas of child welfare, care and protection, adoption and juvenile justice do not comply with the evaluation criteria established by the Inquiry (see Chapter 15).

The United Nations Youth Association of Australia welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. The issue of immigration detention for children has been coming under increased scrutiny in the past eight months. As far as it affects our international standing, the standards by which we treat children and our policies regarding refugees, it is a matter of great importance, which must be rigorously discussed in the public arena.

1.1 Background to this report 1.2 Compliance with human rights obligations 1.3 Conduct of visits 1.4 Overview of immigration detention facilities 1.5 Response by Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs

"Like sands shifted by restless winds, refugees spill today across the globe. They constitute a Fourth World, one whose inhabitants have no representation and over which they have no control."