The Human Rights Law Centre works with international NGOs to highlight the human rights challenges presented by COVID-19 globally and to ensure that UN human rights mechanisms, such as Human Rights Council and Special Procedures, can support countries like Australia in implementing human rights based responses to COVID-19, and hold them to account when they fail to do so.
Read MoreKids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now.
Read MoreThis messaging guide seeks to help people and organisations who are advocating for a an Australian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to craft their public messages in a way that will energise supporters and convince neutral audiences about the many benefits a Charter will provide to the whole community.
Read MoreLast year, Philanthropy Australia held its Philanthropy Meets Parliament Summit where ideas about the state of our democracy were debated, tested and challenged. Continuing that debate in to 2020, Hugh de Kretser, Executive Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, highlights how important charity advocacy is for a healthy democracy.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre has long advocated for comprehensive, fair and effective anti-discrimination laws across Australia. Australia needs stronger protections from discrimination for people of faith, but unfortunately, draft legislation released by the Morrison Government in 2019 contained a number of major flaws and failed to strike the right balance.
Read MoreSome politicians seem to spend more time with their mates in the corporate box than with voters. The Palaszczuk Government is proposing laws to change this. But donation caps will hurt grassroots advocacy and charities the most, and lets corporations off the hook.
Read MoreTwo men, lawyer Bernard Collaery and his client, known as Witness K, now face jail time for blowing the whistle on a disgraceful chapter in Australian intelligence history. The episode highlights the need for stronger whistleblower protections in Australia.
Read MoreThis month marked two important anniversaries for our region, but one is likely to go largely unmentioned in Australia.
Read MoreThe Australian Government has a duty of care to provide proper healthcare to the people it has held offshore on Nauru and Manus for six long years. Before the Medevac laws, it is clear that the Government was failing in its duty.
Read MoreBackbencher Andrew Hastie is chairing a powerful parliamentary committee that is looking into laws that criminalise whistleblowing and journalism. It's ironic, because his opinion piece for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald last week is a perfect example of what is wrong with these laws.
Read MoreSocial security is a vital safety net that most people in Australia will turn to at some point in their lives. In this context, the 2019 federal election offered two very different futures for remote communities in the Northern Territory.
Read MoreToday marks an awful milestone. It is six years since then prime minister Kevin Rudd announced that anyone arriving in Australia by boat seeking safety would be deported to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Read MorePrisons are fundamentally at odds with the notion of rehabilitation. On the brink of tears, a 19-year-old locked up in Port Phillip Prison recently asked me: "How can I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?"
Read MoreThis week saw a big win for women's rights in Australia in the High Court. It is an historic step forward in the long journey for reproductive freedom for women in Australia. It's also a timely reminder of how far we have to go.
Read MoreWhile protest is vital for our democracy, its importance isn’t well understood, and our protest rights aren’t properly protected in Australian law. It’s time this changed. Because while Australia has a proud protest history, we also have a history of governments trying to suppress protest.
Read MoreThe medical and humanitarian crisis in Australia’s offshore detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island keeps escalating, with the bearers of our government’s harsh policies being the bodies of the people who have been held captive for nearly six years.
Read MoreThe government keeps playing politics with innocent people’s lives but the public mood has shifted. After almost six years of unmitigated cruelty to innocent people, Australia is finally rediscovering its moral compass. There’s a palpable sense that this has all gone too far, for too long.
Read MoreThis report shines a spotlight on ten cases of human rights violations involving Australian multinationals. The cases cut across countries and industries, from ANZ’s involvement in financing land grabs in Cambodia to BHP’s role in the Samarco dam disaster in Brazil and Broadspectrum and Wilson Security’s responsibility for alleged sexual assaults on refugee women and children held in offshore detention on Nauru.
Read MoreThis report outlines ten principles guiding how protest should and can be protected and regulated. These principles are rooted in Australia’s Constitution, international law, common law, and general democratic principles. They also draw on international and domestic best practice. They provide a blueprint for a democracy in which the freedoms of expression and assembly are respected and protected.
Read MoreThis report discusses three facets of hate which cause physical, psychological and emotional harm not only to individuals, but to members of the targeted group and other minority communities and damages our community as a whole.
Read MoreOur justice system is supposed to represent the best of us: principled, fair, equal and incorruptible. Underpinned by centuries-old common values that bind and protect us all. But 2018 has exposed a chasm between what is officially said, and what is officially done.
Read MoreWe need a game changer - It’s time to put power into the hands of the people, to give us the tools to hold our governments to account, writes Lee Carnie.
Read MoreThe public vote on marriage equality for LGBTIQ Australians was a bruising time. This anniversary comes with mixed feelings, with wounds that have only just begun to heal for some, and many more psychological scars may last a lifetime.
Read MoreOver the past five years we have seen children on Nauru go from being playful and curious little kids to listless, voiceless, hopeless bodies on a mattress, unable to eat or speak. We’ve seen their spirits slowly dissolve and the brightness slowly fade from their eyes.
Read MoreA major report confirms that religious conversion therapy and related practices are pervasive in many faith communities in Australia and causing real harm to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.
Preventing Harm, Promoting Justice: Responding to LGBT conversion therapy in Australia calls for action by governments, the health sector and religious communities to better respond to people experiencing conflict between their gender identity or sexual orientation and their beliefs.
Read MoreFor over two years, safe access zone laws in Victoria have prevented harm to women seeking abortion care and staff providing those services. During this time, one woman, Ms Clubb, was charged and convicted with engaging in prohibited behaviour in a zone. The HRLC has been granted permission from the High Court to provide submissions as “a friend of the court”.
Read MoreFor too many of us in the LGBTIQ community, we know what it feels like to be mistreated because of who we are or who we love.
Read MoreIt’s 2018 and women’s voices are still ridiculed, disregarded, dismissed and put down. But there’s no doubting that our voices are out there, loud and clear and they are increasingly more difficult to ignore. Our voices are out there and this is a good thing. But not all women’s voices are heard.
Read MoreThe UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. On 3 July, Australia was examined by the Committee about whether it is complying with its obligations. The Human Rights Law Centre presented an overview of the gaps in protections for women and girls to the Committee.
Read MoreOn Friday, the people of Ireland will vote on whether a divisive constitutional ban on abortion should end. Ireland's abortion laws are some of the most harsh and archaic in the world – only since 2013 have abortions to save a woman's life been legal.
Read MoreMost Australians probably think that now we have marriage equality, LGBTI people's rights are fully respected. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
Read MoreFor me and millions of other mums around Australia, today will be a special day. I'll wake to some slightly burnt toast, some slightly cold tea, a jar of jam from the school stall and probably a couple of earnest home-made Mother's Day cards, delivered to me in bed with a smile from my two beautiful boys.
Read MoreRana Plaza is often described as the garment industry’s “worst industrial accident”, but the industry practices that led to it were far from accidental writes Keren Adams.
Read MoreWe need to rethink a system that is funnelling people into harmful prisons as the default response, writes Shahleena Musk.
Read MoreAcross Australia the age of criminal responsibility is set at 10 years. The age of criminal responsibility is the age a child is considered capable of understanding they have done something wrong and can be dealt with in the criminal justice system. All Australian Governments should raise the age of criminal responsibility because it is the right thing to do, because it is evidence-based, and because the recommendations of the NT Royal Commission present a rare opportunity to embrace this change.
Read MoreIn December 2017, the Government introduced the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill into Parliament. The Bill imposes financial controls and compliance measures on organisations and individuals in Australia that incur expenditure to contribute to public debate on policy or government issues.
Read MoreAustralian Governments must prohibit the solitary confinement of children in detention and closely regulate practices that can result in the forced isolation or segregation of a child. So what is solitary confinement?
Read MoreHow we treat people in prison matters not just because most will be released back into the community, but because we are all diminished the moment we start picking and choosing who is deserving of dignity, writes Ruth Barson.
Read MoreIt was not Bob Brown’s first arrest, but it’s probably the one he’ll remember best.
Read MoreEach year thousands of strip searches are conducted on women in Victoria’s prisons. Strip searches are invasive, humiliating and, in many cases, re-traumatising. They require women to strip naked in front of two prison officers. The Human Rights Law Centre reviewed six months of recent Victorian strip search register entries obtained through freedom of information laws from the two women’s prisons in Victoria.
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