Two videos of note featuring Senior Australian of the Year, Professor Ron McCallum:

Australian of the Year Ron McCallum

Ron McCallum Movie

Four years ago, the Australian government seized control of 73 indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The Age reports that in Ampilatwatja, 350 km north-east of Alice Springs, Richard Downs, the leader of the Alyawarr people asked that no pictures be taken of his people as it embarrasses them to be pictured living in dirt.

Along dirt streets littered with rubbish and abandoned vehicles, he points out a $500,000 building, the home and office of a government business manager, one of 60 appointed across the territory to supervise delivery of government services under the emergency intervention. ”That’s all we got over four years … a government business manager living here who everyone in the community tries to avoid and doesn’t listen to,” Downs says. Downs says 500 of his people living in Ampilatwatja have been treated as outcasts from white man’s decision-making. ”No one has asked us what will work for us,” he says.

Federal funding for homelands has been capped at $20 million a year for three years and runs out next year. No government funding is available for new houses on homelands, leaving people living in substandard, overcrowded accommodation with poor infrastructure.

The Australian portraits Professor Mary Crock who has painted a portray of her husband, Senior Australian of the Year 2011, Ron McCallum for the upcoming Archibald Prize. Professor Crock, a renown public law professor at the University of Sydney specialized on migration law – see her recent book on immigration – took up her painting brush after more than two decades to paint her husband of 25 years, who was the first blind person to become a professor of law – industrial law is his speciality – and subsequently dean of the University of Sydney’s Law School.

(c) The Australian

The Universal Periodic Review is the United Nations Human Rights Council’s new mechanism to verify the human rights performance of all 192 UN Member States based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and any human rights treaty the Member State has adopted. The review is now in its fourth and final year for the first cycle of reviews.

Austria and Australia are both up for review in the last week of January 2011: Austria on Australia Day, January 26 and Australia the next day, January 27.

The documents on Austria can be found here, for Australia click here.

The Austrian NGO Coalition for the review can be found here.

The Age reports for the Australian State of Victoria what is already common knowledge among torture prevention experts and others working on human rights issues in police and related work: lack of resources, particularly understaffing can cause human rights violations. Compare, e.g. the Standards of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).

There are apparently 105.000 homeless people in Australia, half of them are estimated to be below 25 years of age. Sarah Davies of the Melbourne Community Foundation discusses in The Age how, despite being a complex issue, the right to housing can be realized.

Recently retired Australian High Court Judge Michael Kirby had the following to say about human rights in an Op-Ed published the other day: 
The essential underpinning of fundamental human rights is love. Love for one another. Empathy for fellow human beings. Feeling pain for the refugee; for the victim of war; for the prisoner deprived of the vote; for the child dying of cholera in Zimbabwe. We can imagine what it must be like to be a victim because, as human beings, we too feel, and yearn for, life, freedom and justice.

One of Australia’s most prominent lawyers – and “most colourful judges” –  High Court Justice Michael Kirby retired today. As the Age’s Leonie Wood summarizes Kirby’s approach to law: “Justice  can only be done by following the law as it has been applied and adapted over time, and then bringing to that vast canon a “sense of justice for the individual as the abiding moral force of the judicial vocation”. Kirby was one of the driving forces of Australia’s increased commitment to implement international human rights.

Australia seems to continue along its path of reconciliation, naming Mick Dodson, one of the “stolen generation” as Australian of the Year and announcing that action is to be taken on ensuring that indigenous people have access to birth certificates – addressing a long lingering “identiy crisis,” which creates a major barrier in accessing mainstream services, among others.

Australian newspapers are reporting that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will utilize the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to announce the creation of a panel to discuss a bill of human rights for Australia. The Age refers to a statement made by attorney-general McClelland in Sydney on Tuesday evening. Stating that the treatment of indigenous Australians was the most pressing human rights issue, the attorney-general said that a three member committee would be called in, receiving contributions from all Australians – one would hope that this is not meant literally and will actually also include state-less and other persons much in need of human rights protection. 
The Australian reports that the 1998 UK Human Rights Act is one of the inspirations for the latest human rights move by the Australian government. It cites Jack Straw, the former British minister and enacter of the UK Bill as being “greatly frustrated” with the Bill, particularly the interpretation provided by judges.

In a somewhat flippant remark, Australia’s out-going Governor General Michael Jeffery, tried to limit the indigenous people still feeling the consequences of exclusion to 100.000. Jeff McMullen responds very plainly via the Op-Ed pages of the Age: 

“If you walk in the shoes of an Aborigine or Torres Strait Islander, you know that whether you live in the city, regional Australia or a remote community your life expectancy is 17 years less than the rest of Australians. Your health, housing, education and employment opportunities are also far worse. Your social stress and the racism and discrimination you endure occur in most parts of Australia. You belong to an underclass of disadvantage that allows escape only by the most extraordinary or fortunate minority, who against so many odds are able to fight for and achieve that elusive equality.”

It took the United Nations some 20 years to agree on a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The pressing need to implement the commitment to the inclusion, participation and enjoyment of all human rights is evidenced by the latest news report that the rate of suicides among young indigenous people in Western Australia has reached a new high. There are also clear patterns of marginalization with reports of substance and sexual abuse.

The Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, which is established as one of the expert bodies of the United Nations to evaluate the performance of State Parties on the right to health, housing, education, culture and related matters, is to review Australia’s performance soon. 

Ahead of this, a group of NGOs in Australia have banded together and written a thorough civil society report, which outlines the need to recognize economic, social & cultural rights legally, the – alarming – state of poverty in Australia, the situation of women who are subject to violence, the state of workers’ rights and homelessness, among others. Not surprisingly, the report also tackles the infringements of the economic, social & cultural rights of immigrants and their families.

Part of the statement by Australiam Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:

“The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.”

The Australian government plans to make a public apology to the “stolen generation.” After years of debate, there is to be official recognition for the wrongs done to indigenous peoples.

Undealt injustices committed by a public body – no matter at what scale – have a negative impact on the human rights culture and therewith on the social fabric of a country. Many countries struggle to come to terms with such wrongs.

Obviously, there is no “right” way of getting the wrong “right.” Actually, I don’t think that there is a “right” after wrong but rather accommodation of the “wrong” through recognition. What I find interesting in the Australian debate is that – a bit like the Austrian, which, however, is not comparable – under political considerations, only part of the recognition takes place. How so? If one were to try and do this as completely as possible, as holistically as feasible, it should go like this: come up with a common history between the two sides (there is usually two distinct sides although there are obviously many shades of grey at play). That common history needs to be based on mutually agreeable facts. Truth, in essence, cannot be agreed upon; so it is publicly discussed and settled facts. That is a long, painful but very meaningful process.

Based on facts, one should try and come up with a meaningful apology. Then one may want to commence the parallel process of sustainably including the common-history into public discourse as well as addressing the marginalization of those who suffered the injustices as well as their descendants.

The need for a holistic approach to this is underestimated in most post-injustice situations, no matter what the scale. Ultimately the recognition of past wrongs is another variant of acknowledging that for everyone to enjoy and show mutual respect, their dignity has to be ensured. If there is a shadow of injustice, there is no dignity. If there is no dignity there is a violation of the sum of human rights.