Attacks on Human Rights Commission distract attention from protecting children

Baseless attacks on the Australian Human Rights Commission and its President, Professor Gillian Triggs, serve only to distract attention from protecting vulnerable children under Australia’s care, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) said today.

“The Australian Human Rights Commission report The Forgotten Children is a well-researched, detailed and deeply disturbing account of the harm inflicted on vulnerable children as a direct result of decisions taken by successive governments,” Paul Power, chief executive officer of RCOA., said

“It draws on evidence from internationally-recognised medical experts, education professionals, non-government organisations and service providers working with asylum seekers, as well as interviews with more than 1000 children and their parents in Australian detention facilities.

“The evidence is comprehensive, consistent and irrefutable. Disappointingly, the Australian Government has turned a blind eye to the report’s compelling findings and instead accused the Human Rights Commission and its President of orchestrating a political stunt.

“The reality is that both of Australia’s major political parties bear responsibility for the harm inflicted on children by indefinite mandatory detention.

“Under the Rudd and Gillard Governments, record numbers of children were detained, reaching a peak of 1,992 in July 2013.

“In its first year in office, the Abbott Government reduced the number of children detained in Australian centres from 1078 to 603 but the average length of time in detention for children and adults blew out from 115 days to 413 days. As at 31 January 2015, 211 children remained in detention in Australia and 119 in Nauru, nearly all of them detained for well over a year.

“As The Forgotten Children report clearly shows, the longer a person is held in detention, the worse the impacts on their health and wellbeing – particularly in the case of children.

“Many Australians are asking why Australia is the only country in the world to detain asylum seeker children as a first option. Why does Australia detain children for so long when David Cameron’s Conservative government in the United Kingdom has legislated to limit the detention of children to less than seven days?

“Rather than attacking the Australian Human Rights Commission for doing its job, the Government should be getting on with its own job: protecting the vulnerable children under its care. It should immediately introduce legislation to prevent the detention of children and ensure that this shameful policy is never repeated.”

See the joint statement of 237 organisations calling for legislation to stop the detention of children:

http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Joint-statement-end-detention-of-children.pdf

Lucy Mangan