THE
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT
The
Golden Key Lecture
Chris Sidoti
Visiting
Professor
University
of Western Sydney
National
Spokesperson
Human
Rights Council of Australia
28 October 2002
INTRODUCTION
The last time I spoke to a group of university students was a little
over two weeks ago at the University of Mataram in Lombok, Indonesia. On that occasion over 100 students
turned up for three hours on a Saturday morning to participate in a special
seminar with me. Needless to say I was very impressed and very honoured. I have
spoken at a number of Indonesian universities over the last two years. On each
occasion I have been most impressed with the young Indonesian students. They
are far less sophisticated and far less knowledgeable of the world than you
Australian students but they are intelligent, enthusiastic, eager to learn. The
ones I have met have critical, inquiring minds. They long for new ideas and for
intellectual challenges – but not for merely intellectual purposes. They have a
sense that their own futures and the future of their country are in their
hands. Their obvious thirst for knowledge has a very practical basis in their
own lives and experiences and in their own hopes and aspirations.
At the University of Mataram we spent most of the morning debating the nature of human rights
and the relevance of human rights in international and national affairs. To say
that the students were suspicious, even cynical, about human rights would be an
under-statement. Many were very open about their view that human rights were no
more than new weapons of Western imperialism and domination, that Western
powers, especially the United States but also Australia, were imposing human
rights agendas on developing countries as a means of destabilising their
governments, retarding the development of their peoples and maintaining the
existing power imbalance in the world. In one sense I was on the defensive.
They saw me as the spokesperson and apologist for Western imperial designs. But
in another sense I was able to agree with much of what they said, with many of
their criticisms.
The Mataram students were correct in
pointing to Western hypocrisy in dealing with human rights. Far too often
Western countries and their peoples see human rights as problems only in
developing countries, not in their own countries. And so
successive United States administrations, including that of the most
recent Nobel laureate, Jimmy Carter, refuse to participate in many important
international human rights treaties and processes. And the Australian Government becomes aggressively hostile and
bitterly dismissive whenever its performance attracts international criticism.
So the Indonesian students have good grounds for seeing human rights as
something Western states impose on poor countries while ignoring themselves.
The hypocrisy of countries like Australia
and the United States, however, does not invalidate human rights or make them irrelevant.
It simply and starkly indicates that human rights law makes demands on us all,
that no country’s performance is perfect or even acceptable. That is precisely
why the international human rights legal system has been developed over the
past 50 years, because we all need to do better. Let me go back to the
beginnings of that process, to the early 1940s.
THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE LAW OF WAR
In the aftermath of World War II the world’s nations and peoples
sought to build a new civilisation of international law, human rights and human
solidarity from the tragedy of the War and the Holocaust. First, they
established the United Nations as a new global organisation through which
disputes could be resolved, peace ensured and human rights protected and
promoted. The Charter of the United Nations, adopted in 1945, made these
objectives explicit. It did not establish a global or world government. The
United Nations is far from that. Instead the Charter established a forum, open
to all nations, in which they could jointly pursue common objectives of
international peace and security. It gave limited powers of action and
enforcement to only one organ of the United Nations, the Security Council, and
even then hedged those powers with many restrictions and made their exercise
subject to the veto power given to each of the five Great Powers of the post
War world.
The United Nations Charter proscribed wars of aggression. It
effectively made war lawful in only two circumstances. First, war is lawful
when it is authorised by the Security Council as a necessary response to a
breach of or a threat to international peace and security. And second, war is
lawful when it is undertaken in immediate self defence, that is, where it is an
immediate response to an act of aggression against the state or to some direct
threat and then only pending action by the Security Council. The Charter
envisaged an end to war, reflecting the early post World War II optimism that,
after that terrible experience, no nation would again resort to war. The threat
of combined international action under the auspices of the Security Council was
thought to be so significant and so powerful that no nation would expose itself
to it by launching a war.
Of course the experience of the past fifty years has proved
otherwise. Indeed, it has been said that there have been more wars during this
period than at any time in human history and that more people have died as a
result of war and conflict. But the UN Charter is clear in attempting to build
a new approach to conflict resolution. Especially since the end of the Cold War
nations, even superpowers, have been conscious of the need to bring themselves
and their actions within the scope of Charter provisions. So, for example, the United States has sought Security Council approval for almost all its military
activities over the past decade - in the Gulf, Somalia, the Balkans and so on. And it justified its war in Afghanistan as an act of self defence in response to direct attacks on its
territory and citizens. The legitimacy of this, however, is questionable since
the attacks on the United
States on 11 September 2001 were not committed by the Government of Afghanistan but, it has
been alleged, by a non-state group, a terrorist organisation. I am happy to
discuss this further later if you wish.
The war in Afghanistan last year and now the circumstances of the threatened war against Iraq
challenge the new international legal regime established after World War II.
They may involve the only superpower, now often referred to as the hyper-power,
publicly and persistently repudiating the authority of the United Nations and
its Security Council and the law of war established by its Charter. Iraq has
not been linked to the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, even though the President of the United States gave it membership of the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union
address in January this year. So there is no basis on which the United States can argue, even unconvincingly, that Iraq has
undertaken a direct attack or is threatening a direct attack on the United States such as would entitle the United States to take action in self defence. Rather, the United States case against Iraq is
based on Iraq’s defiance of Security Council resolutions and its alleged program
for the production of weapons of mass destruction. Yet the United States
President, at first, showed no intention or interest in seeking Security
Council authorisation for any military action against Iraq.
Under intense pressure at home and from abroad, he finally referred the issue
to the United Nations when he addressed the General Assembly on 12 September
this year and then sought a new resolution from the Security Council. But this
action has been accompanied by threats approaching blackmail. “If you don’t
approve, then we’ll do it anyway without you”.
I was concerned when the Australian Government seemed to be taking
the same line as the United
States
administration, endorsing the proposed new war against Iraq,
offering Australian military involvement and ignoring the legal requirement for
Security Council authorisation. There is no legal basis for Australian
involvement without Security Council authority. There is and can be no
suggestion of any need for Australia
to act against Iraq in self defence. It can be involved lawfully only if it is acting
under a Security Council mandate. The position of the Australian Government has
changed as the United
States position has
changed and it too now awaits Security Council determination. Australia
may have been saved criticism that it is in breach of international law, not
because it stopped short of illegal military intervention out of concern for
the law but because the United
States
administration thought better of unilateral action.
These fundamental changes to the laws and practices of war have been
the first area of significant United Nations activity. The second has been
activity to protect and promote human rights.
THE UNITED NATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The United Nations Charter provides that the protection and
promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms without discrimination is
one of the core objectives of the organisation. Article 1 of the Charter sets
this as one of the purposes of the United Nations. However, the Charter does
not define what human rights and fundamental freedoms are. That task came a
little later, in 1948. In that year the UN Commission on Human Rights completed
its work on a draft resolution on human rights and on 10 December 1948 the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights as “a common standard of achievement for all nations ad all peoples”.
This was truly an historic task. It was historically difficult. It required
agreement by the governments of all the nations in the world at the time, 54 of
them. The Declaration represented an unbelievable consensus, across all the
political, economic, religious, cultural and social divisions that beset
humanity, on what it means to be human, on what human beings require to live
fully human lives.
Over the next fifty years the work
of building the international human rights legal system progressed, with
frustrations, break-throughs, failures and
achievements. Treaty after treaty was negotiated, approved by the United
Nations and entered into force – treaties on economic, social and cultural
rights, civil and political rights, racial discrimination, discrimination
against women, torture and children; treaties that provide for international
consideration of complaints of human rights violations; treaties that seek to
eradicate capital punishment, commercial sexual exploitation of children and
the use of child soldiers in combat. Australia played significant roles in the
negotiation of all these treaties, cooperating with other states with like
minds when it comes to better protecting human rights.
The system now established rests
on a very well developed body of law. Indeed the law is the best part of it. It
contains comprehensive statements of rights and freedoms and sets out clear
state responsibilities. It is not restricted to the rights of individuals, as
some argue, but extends to the rights of peoples, such as in relation to self
determination and development, and the rights of groups, for example, ethnic,
religious, linguistic and cultural minorities. It now also gives specific recognition
to the rights of indigenous peoples.
The basic deficiency in the
international system relates to enforcement. There is no world government and
no world police force that will enforce the law. There is no world court with
jurisdiction to make binding, enforceable decisions in human rights cases. As I
have already indicated the only United Nations organ with enforcement power is
the Security Council but its work does not extend to all human rights cases –
it would be impractical if it sought to do so – and its decisions to take
enforcement action are rare and inconsistent. The establishment of the
International Criminal Court this year marks the most significant development
yet in the enforcement of human rights. The ICC will be a permanent standing court
with jurisdiction in cases of the most serious human rights violations –
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – where national courts fail
to deal with them adequately. When it begins operating in The Hague early next year, it will mark a
quantum leap in the international human rights system, a leap that is long
overdue and long needed. But even then it will not be enough. The ICC will not
have jurisdiction in relation to all states, only in relation to those states
that ratify its statute. And its jurisdiction is restricted to the most serious
violations, not all violations. Until the Court has a universal jurisdiction
extending to all states and all violations, the enforcement system will remain
deficient.
In the absence of proper mechanisms for enforcement, the
international human rights system is based upon cooperation, dialogue,
persuasion and moral and political pressure. The major human rights treaties
establish monitoring committees to which states must report periodically and
before which they must defend their performance. The committees look at general
compliance and sometimes they can also consider individual cases of alleged
violation. The committees do not make binding legal decisions and have no
enforcement powers. Their processes are collaborative and persuasive.
These limitations in the international system are rarely
appreciated. Those who complain that the system does not work well generally
are not aware that its very structure is deficient. Those, like my student
friends at the University of Mataram, who say the
system overrides state sovereignty and imposes Western standards do not
understand just how weak the system is. Its weakness may be one of its
strengths, at this stage, however. It enables the regime to develop further
without drawing opposition on the basis of it is over-bearing. It encourages
states to become involved because they can obtain assistance and they become
entitled to international cooperation in building human rights respecting
societies. It does not permit the type of superpower domination that many
states fear. An international human rights system based on cooperation and
persuasion might be unable to enforce its will but it may be more effective in
promoting human rights precisely because states participate willingly and
freely, out of conviction rather than fear.
AUSTRALIA AND THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM
Let me turn now to discuss how Australia
has related to this system of human rights law, examining both international
and domestic dimensions of the relationship. For fifty years Australia
sought to establish its leadership in promoting human rights work domestically
and internationally but in more recent years it has simply lost the plot.
Australia played an important part in
building the international human rights system from the beginning. In 1948 it
was one of the eight nations chosen to take responsibility for drafting the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with the five permanent members of
the UN Security Council (China, France, the USSR, the United States and the United Kingdom) and Lebanon and Chile. Its Minister for External
Affairs at the time, Dr H V Evatt, was President of
the General Assembly when the Declaration was adopted. Australia was recognised as being in
the forefront of nations committed to the development of the new international
legal regime that could protect the human rights of all people. It played significant roles in the negotiation
of all the human rights treaties, cooperating with other states with like minds
when it came to better protecting human rights. It played especially important
roles in relation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Statute
of the International Criminal Court. In both cases the negotiation of these
new treaties was in jeopardy, close to failure, when Australia led
major initiatives to reach agreement and complete the task of drafting and
approving the texts.
Beyond drafting
new human rights treaties Australia and
Australians have been prominent in international human rights forums. Australia has
been an elected member of the UN Commission on Human Rights on many occasions,
most recently again in May this year. In that Commission Australian delegations
have played leadership roles on important issues like women's rights, the
rights of children and indigenous rights. Australia has
had principal responsibility for the annual debate on national human rights
institutions. Several eminent Australians have been elected expert members of
human rights treaty committees:
q
the Hon Elizabeth Evatt
and now Professor Ivan Shearer on the Human Rights Committee
q
Professor Philip Alston on the Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, of which he was chair and earlier rapporteur
q
the Hon
Elizabeth Evatt on the Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women, of which she too was chair.
Australia’s
role in UN forums was so positive that in March 2000 the Secretary General of
the United Nations described it as “a model member” of the UN. Since then,
however, Australia has stopped being "a model member" and
joined the ranks of the staunchest critics of the very mechanisms we have been
so instrumental in establishing, the ranks of those who would tear down what
has been so carefully and arduously constructed. The intemperate rhetoric of
some ministers, including the most senior, and Australia’s
recent voting record have aligned Australia
with hard line states with appalling human rights records, like China, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and
Burma. Australia
does not belong in that company. Indeed sometimes these states behave better
than we do. Let me give you one example.
Burma has
been criticised for many years for its practice of forced labour. The military
government there has said it is doing all it can to eliminate the practice but
international observers are doubtful and still critical. In October 2001 Burma
welcomed a delegation from the International labour Organisation to inspect its
performance. The delegation was headed by the former Australian High Court
judge and Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephen. Sir Ninian met senior government officials and was able to
travel freely to many parts of the country to meet with local people and to
conduct his own investigations. His report of his visit was very critical of Burma.
The government responded quite positively to the report, entered into further
discussions with the ILO and soon agreed to the establishment of a permanent
ILO office in Rangoon.
Now
the contrast. Australia has
received considerable international attention for its practice of compulsory
detention of asylum seekers. In May 2002 a representative of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Justice P N Bhagwati,
a former Chief Justice of India, visited the Woomera
detention on behalf of the High Commissioner. The Australian Government was
hostile to the visit, delaying it when it was first requested and then
restricting its scope as much as possible. When Justice Bhagwati
delivered his report late in June 2002, he was subjected to severe personal
criticism, his comments dismissed as emotive and misconceived and his integrity
impugned. There was no interest in serious dialogue or in careful examination
of Justice Bhagwati’s comments. The Australian
Government’s response to Justice Bhagwati’s visit was
far more dismissive and extreme than the Burmese Government’s response to Sir Ninian Stephen.
The
problem, it seems, is that, while no government likes criticism, the present
Australian Government is more sensitive than any of its predecessors and most
of its contemporaries. Like a petulant child when reprimanded it has responded
to criticism by attempting to destroy the whole game. It is neither mature
enough to listen to the views of others nor big enough to admit when it is
wrong.
Each
of the six key human rights treaties has a committee of independent experts to
monitor compliance with the treaty’s obligations. Over the last two years Australia’s
performance of its commitments has been criticised repeatedly by every one of
these six committees:
q
by the Human Rights Committee established under
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in relation to
mandatory sentencing of offenders and mandatory detention of unauthorised
arrivals
q
by the Committee established for the International
Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, in relation to indigenous
disadvantage
q
by the Committee established under the Convention
Against Torture and other forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment, for its treatment of asylum seekers and conditions in prisons,
especially for indigenous people
q
by the Committee established under the Convention
on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, in relation to
native title, mandatory sentencing and criminal justice generally, past
policies of removing children and reconciliation
q
by the Committee established under the Convention
on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, for
perceived downgrading of women's rights
q
by the
Committee established under the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
in relation to the mandatory sentencing of children.
In
addition other mechanisms within the international human rights legal system
have criticised Australia, most
recently the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention established by the UN
Commission on Human Rights and Justice P N Bhagwati,
the special representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Government
ministers have railed against these criticisms. They have not only rejected the
messages but also attacked the integrity of the messengers. They have
complained that the committees, working groups and representatives are biased
against Australia,
that they are subjective and emotive, that they do not know the
facts, that they rely too much on non-government organisations and that they
pay too little heed to the views of a democratically elected government. People in Asia
point out in amazement that these are the defensive arguments of their own repressive
governments when their countries' performances are criticised.
In response to
these criticisms, however, the Australian Government has left the ranks of
states supporting the international human rights legal system and joined those
of the system’s worst opponents. In September 2000 the Australian Government
decided not to ratify the new supplementary treaty to the women's
discrimination convention to allow individual complaints to the treaty
committee. This decision deprives Australian women of a new opportunity to
advance the protection of their rights. In June 2002 the Government came close
to deciding not to ratify the Statute of the International Criminal Court, a
treaty that Australia had
played a pivotal role in securing. In June 2002, it voted against a new treaty
on inspection of places of detention. This action is most concerning. The
Government did not decide simply not to ratify a treaty itself. It went
further, seeking to prevent the treaty even being debated by the UN General
Assembly, seeking to prevent any country from accepting international
inspection. The only company it could find for this view was the company of
China, Cuba, Egypt, Japan, Libya, Nigeria and the Sudan, all but Japan
notorious human rights violators.
Australia has
gone from being a “model member” of the United Nations to being among the most
recalcitrant states, in the space of a mere two years.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE DOMESTIC AGENDA
I am a human
rights lawyer who has long been committed to the development and strengthening
of the international legal system. And so Australia’s
retreat from that system concerns me deeply. However, as an Australian I
despair far more about how Australia has
retreated from the quest to build a more just society to the point where it now
embraces laws and policies that violate the fundamental human rights of our
fellow Australians and others who are within Australia’s
jurisdiction.
The
single most serious human rights situation in Australia is the continued disadvantage
of indigenous peoples as a legacy of two centuries of
dispossession, marginalisation and impoverishment. Over these two centuries
they lost their lands, their children and often their lives and their culture
was undermined. We may not want to admit it but they were truly threatened with
genocide. As a result today Australia’s 410,000 indigenous people
have almost no political and economic power.
Australia has
been relatively generous in accepting immigrants, both those
simply seeking a better life here for themselves and their children and those
fleeing persecution, war and famine. Today all Australians other than indigenous
people are either migrants or the descendents of migrants. However, migration
programs to Australia over
the last century have been strictly controlled and quite selective. Australian
governments have accepted migrants only on the basis that it alone chooses whom
to accept. Quite large numbers of
refugees from off-shore camps have been accepted on the basis of careful
selection and control. Those who have sought to come directly to Australia have
been treated harshly. The
policy of multiculturalism adopted in the mid 1970s has recognised the richness
of Australia’s cultural diversity and
enabled immigrants to maintain their traditions, customs and cultural
identities while ascribing to common national values and aspirations.
As in other areas of human rights,
however, progress in this area has been undermined since the mid 1990s. The new
government elected in 1996 did not repudiate the policy of multiculturalism
formally but the word became taboo and it embarked on policy shifts that
implicitly endorsed a reversion to past policies of assimilation. There has
been an increase in nationalist rhetoric and in exclusion of those who do not
adopt the views, attitudes and behaviours of the dominant group. Muslims and
people from west Asia generally have been singled
out for particular attention from political figures and media commentators on
the basis of their difference.
The
treatment of asylum seekers who have arrived by boat without
authority is of particular concern., Since 1989 these
people have been subjected to indefinite mandatory detention until they are
either granted asylum or deported. Australian law imposes this regime on
virtually all unauthorised arrivals. There is no judicial or other independent
review of detention and no power for a court or any other authority to order
release, at least before the final determination is made. They are detained in spartan conditions in camps, called immigration reception
and processing centres, in remote areas of Australia, camps with few
facilities, no formal and little informal education for children, inadequate
health and medical services, minimal recreational and sporting equipment and
poor quality bedrooms, bathrooms and toilets.
In
September 2001 the Australia Government acted to prevent any more asylum
seekers reaching Australia by
boat, through policies to turn around boats at the edge of the territorial
waters or to remove their passengers and take them to even more remote camps in
Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Legislation to implement these
harder policies was passed by the Australian parliament on 26
September 2001.
No new asylum seekers have reached the Australian mainland since then.
As a result the asylum seeker situation within Australia has changed
fundamentally. Numbers in the camps are declining rapidly. Increasingly those
who remain are awaiting deportation but they do not know when they will be
deported or to what country. Most face indefinite detention as Australia is
unable to find a country prepared to accept them. Whatever arguments the
Government might have presented in the past for these policies can no longer be
sustained when there are no boats coming and little possibility of repatriation
for the remaining detainees.
Acceptance
as permanent settlers does not end the exclusion experienced by new-comers. The
commitment to a multi-cultural Australia,
adopted and affirmed since the 1970s, is itself under attack. The situation of recently
arrived immigrant communities is of particular concern. The older,
larger immigrants communities, for example, from Britain, Ireland, Italy and Greece, have
established themselves very successfully in Australia and
now exercise considerable political and economic influence. Newer and smaller
communities, however, encounter continuing difficulties. Many of them include
significant numbers of refugees. They are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and
areas of Africa affected by
significant conflict.
Smaller, more recently arrived immigrant
communities struggle to secure a place within Australian society. Members of
these groups are generally poor to very poor and have low educational
attainment and poor employment experiences. For them inclusion remains
problematic. The experiences of earlier immigrant communities indicate that
over one or two generations members of the newer communities too will come to
assume prominent positions within Australian society. However, these
communities need assistance in the short term to establish their place.
Women
in the newer communities encounter particular difficulties. They usually know
less English than men and have fewer opportunities to learn English than men.
Women from traditional communities or families tend to live in isolation from
the broader community, either not working or working in low skilled, low paid
jobs with fellow workers who predominantly are also recent immigrants.
Many
of the newer communities are predominantly Muslim. Their members face
difficulty in being accepted in the context of general international
stereotyping and even vilification of Muslims. They have been subjected to
verbal and physical attacks in public both as individuals and as a religious
community. There is little public understanding of Islam and of the wide range
of theological and ideological views of Muslims. All are lumped together and
the extremist views of a few are attributed to the moderate majority.
The stereotyping of Muslims in
Australia were
exacerbated by the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11
September 2001
and the international campaign against terrorism since then. On 12 September
the Australian Government announced that it would support whatever action the United States decided to take to respond to
the attacks and it offered Australian military personnel to assist that. The
Government’s responses involved further reductions in the enjoyment of human
rights in Australia, again reversing the trends
of fifty years in expanding the scope of human rights protection. And now of
course that situation has deteriorated further with the terrorist bombings in Bali and the terrible loss of
life, including many Australians.
The
terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 have
reversed the trend of fifty years in Australia towards greater respect for
civil rights and personal liberties. Earlier this year the Government
introduced new legislation to increase the surveillance and other powers of
police and intelligence agencies. The proposed legislation provided for lengthy
detention without charge or trial, the power to proscribe organisations and to
criminalise membership of a proscribed organisation, increased powers of
electronic surveillance and similar measures. The proposed legislation was
criticised strongly by legal professional associations and human rights groups
as unnecessarily and widely restricting human rights and placing a person at
risk of criminal prosecution simply because of where he or she goes and to whom
he or she speaks. An all-party parliamentary committee inquiring into the
proposed legislation recommended sweeping changes to it. The government
accepted some of the recommendations and amended legislation was passed. Now in
the wake of the Bali bombings the original plans
are being revived and further legislation has been foreshadowed. It is likely
to continue the serious erosion of human rights.
Australia has
been a rich country with a relatively well educated population, good public
services, well developed democratic institutions, low levels of corruption and a
tradition of acceptance and egalitarianism. It still is. It has had and still
has much going for it. The frustration about being an Australian is that we
should be able to build a paradise on earth in this country and yet we are
failing so dismally to do so. We still have that opportunity, at least for a
while.
We need to take action now to revive the
reconciliation process, change policies to enable the release of all asylum
seekers who do not need to be detained and those who cannot be deported, re-affirm
the commitment to multi-culturalism in real and
practical ways and so on. There is need also for better legal protection of
human rights, public education and persuasion about human rights, human rights
education for politicians and public servants and benchmarks, baselines and
targets to assess human rights performance.
There is need
as well for Australia to
return to its customary role as a human rights advocate among nations,
especially among the nations of this region. One of the saddest consequences of
the Bali bombing has
been the adoption of draconian national security laws in Indonesia
that permit detention without charge and trail for up to 12 months and impose
the death penalty on those convicted of a very widely and vaguely defined act
of terrorism. Australian anti-terrorism laws are bad but these are laws that
would never be accepted in this country. Yet Australia and
the United States
have pressed these laws upon the Indonesian Government which has imposed them
upon the Indonesian people still suffering, still struggling, after emerging
barely four years ago from thirty five years of military dictatorship. The new
Indonesian laws are modelled on the colonial internal security laws of Malaysia and
Singapore
that have been condemned for decades for their human rights violations. Far
from being a leader of human rights in this region Australia
seems now to be the principal advocate for political changes that will enable
the mass violation of the fundamental rights of the poorest people.
Australia’s
geographical location between Asia and
the Pacific, its quite unique history, its developing multicultural society and
its relative wealth enable it to play a limited but important regional role in
support of human rights. It has not always been willing to do so, however,
especially when such a role would be contrary to its perceived national
interests or to the policy of the United
States. The challenge
now is to become again a prominent defender of and advocate for human rights.
Having suffered so severely ourselves from the evil of terrorism we are now
entitled to lead by example, not to lecture from the distance. Our example
should be one of a society that is committed to human rights, that will not
allow itself to be swayed from that path or to be blown
off that path by the acts of terrorists. We should show that it is possible to
protect our citizens and the citizens of other states without violating their
rights. Never before has the task of promoting human rights in this region been
more important.
Globally Australia
needs to re-establish its role as a leader in building an effective
international human rights legal system. Its credibility in this has been
severely dented. It can resume its role only through hard work and commitment. Australia continues
to have much to offer but it must be credible if it is to be effective. This
will require more committed participation in the international system.
q
Australia
must work to ensure the speedy and successful commencement of the International
Criminal Court, without succumbing to efforts by the United
States to create a
legal black hole for US soldiers and other agents.
q
It should move to ratify as quickly as possible the
newer human rights treaties it has so far failed to ratify, including the
optional protocol to the women’s discrimination convention, dealing with
complaints to the expert committee, the two optional protocols to the
children’s convention, dealing with commercial sexual exploitation and child
soldiers, and the migrant workers treaty.
q
It must engage more meaningfully with the human
rights treaty monitoring committees and with UN human rights mechanisms,
including through more visits to Australia and
more positive and constructive dialogue.
q
It must be prepared to submit to proper international
scrutiny if it is to expect other, far less compliant states to submit.
q
It must revive its flagging support for the draft
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and reverse its hostility
towards the proposed optional protocol to the torture convention on inspection
of places of detention.
THE ROLE OF STUDENTS
Australia
must not only lead. We must also learn. We can lead on the basis of our long
democratic tradition and our longstanding commitment to human rights. We must
learn about the role of people, especially students, in this work. We must
learn from our own past, when community groups were far more vocal, active and
effective in human rights work than they are today. And we must learn from our
neighbours where young people, particularly students, play such significant
leadership roles in promoting human rights and freedoms. Australia has
greater need for an active student population now than it has had for many
years. And there are opportunities to match this need.
Australian students certainly do it tough these
days, far tougher than students found it in my day. Fees have been
re-introduced. There are fewer scholarships for study. The HECS scheme either
requires large up-front payments or leaves students in heavy debt on
graduation. Students have to work more and earn more to be able to live. And
competition makes it all that much harder. Yet many students still find the
time and the energy and have the commitment to be active on many important
community issues. Environmental groups in particular would struggle to survive
without substantial participation by students and other young people. Many are
already active in human rights groups and causes. It seems extreme bad taste
and great injustice to ask for more. Yet I must.
Your commitment to and involvement in human rights
work is not merely important. It is critical to the future of this country.
Unless the tide of the last few years is turned soon, the new dismissive
hostile attitudes towards human rights will become embedded in our culture and
destined to be with us for decades.
The areas for action are well known to you.
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There are many community organisations that take up
particular human rights causes or that involve themselves more generally in
human rights work. Join or increase your activity in them.
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There is need to pressure the media to be more
positive about human rights and human rights issues. Hit the airwaves. Seek
opportunities to place your views before the community, especially through
talkback radio and tabloid newspapers.
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There is need to move human rights knowledge and
understanding beyond academic institutions and privileged discussions and into
the broader community. Look for ways to raise and discuss human rights issues
in your families and among your friends. Join others in local community
education initiatives.
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Divisions within the community must be addressed and
broken down. Find ways to meet and develop friendships across the divides of
ethnicity, religion and class. Build alliances and cooperation so that those
most marginalized are able to become part of our broader community and to make
their contribution to it in their own ways.
The opportunities are there, as much as they ever
were, for Australia to
be a leader on human rights internationally and domestically. It’s not the
opportunity that is lacking, only the will, the commitment, the wisdom and the
belief. The question now is whether we are committed and determined enough to
re-discover the way ahead.