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Australia's shame: report to UN raises plight of children

By Adele Horin

6 June 2005 - A report on Australia's children that highlights the "shame" of indigenous children's welfare and the plight of children in immigration detention will be handed to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva this week.

The report, prepared by non-government legal and child welfare agencies, takes issue with a more positive report presented to the same committee by the Federal Government two years ago.

The UN committee is expected to publish its assessment of Australia's compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child this year.

The non-government report also calls for a multi-party committee, with children involved, to consider the ramifications of lowering the voting age.

A delegation including several young people led by Judy Cashmore, president of Defence for Children International (Australia), will put its concerns to the committee on Thursday.

While it concedes Australia has made some advances, it argues the "substandard living conditions" of many Aboriginal children remain "Australia's greatest shame".

The report draws attention to the prevalence of trachoma, an eye disease eliminated in other developed countries, and to higher rates of malnutrition and ear, skin, chest, and gastro-intestinal infections among Aboriginal children.

It refers to their over-representation in juvenile justice centres and foster care, and low school retention rates.

Dr Cashmore said the incarceration of children in immigration detention centres "was clearly in breach of the UN convention". She said the Government had claimed its policy on detention was in "the best interests of the children" because it kept them with their parents.

"It was as if keeping them together was the only option," she said. "We are one of the very few Western countries in the world that arbitrarily detains children, and the only Western country that does it indefinitely."

The non-government report, compiled with the National Children's and Youth Law Centre after a two-year, Australia-wide consultation process, said the Government seemed to be in retreat from its commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It had failed to pass national laws to give effect to its international obligations, and had not established a national commissioner for children.

It had abolished the position of Minister for Children and Young People and downgraded it to a parliamentary secretary's role.

The report, Rights of the Child in Australia, draws attention to the lack of services for vulnerable young people with mental health and substance abuse problems and with disabilities, as well as to inequitable access to child care.

It said the issue of a lower voting age had never been given serious attention.

By contrast, the Government highlighted in its 2003 report that "most Australian children" enjoyed lower infant mortality rates, better health, higher educational outcomes and greater leisure opportunities than their counterparts in many other countries. It pointed to a reduction in youth suicide since 1997 and the creation of a "Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to ensure an integrated government approach …"

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

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