CW: This article mentions self-harm, attempted suicide, and incarceration.
Human Rights Lawyers and Aboriginal leaders lodged a complaint to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) on the “discriminatory and punitive youth justice policies” that constitute significant human rights violations against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia.
The complaint was submitted by Curtin Law School’s Associate Professor and expert member of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous issues Hannah McGlade, with support from the Human Rights Law Centre. It calls on UNCERD to find the Australian Government in serious violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The document describes racial discrimination and human rights violations across federal, state, and territory levels. In a Human Rights Law Centre media release, they specified this to include”‘draconian laws and policies… which [are] fuelling a mass incarceration crisis” as well as “cruel, inhuman[e] and degrading treatment of children by criminal legal systems, such as the use of spit hoods, solitary confinement and strip-searching” and “persistent government inaction on independent recommendations for reform.”
The complaint makes direct reference to the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, whose recommendations were “contravened, ignored, or only partially implemented”, alongside references to the National Children’s Commissioner’s landmark ‘Help Way Earlier! 2024 Report’. It also notes the failure of the Closing the Gap National Agreement to elicit change.
McGlade said, “We have made this urgent complaint because Aboriginal children’s lives are on the line. Governments have refused to engage respectfully with Aboriginal people or respect the binding international human rights laws and standards we’ve agreed to.”
“There must be accountability and reform, we cannot keep going on this path of destruction, violence and racism towards Indigenous children. Our kids deserve better and our people deserve better,” She continued.
First Nations Justice Director of the Human Rights Law Centre Maggie Munn further stated that “Instead of taking action to stop these human rights violations, governments across Australia are introducing and doubling down on deeply punitive laws that will exacerbate the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in police and prison cells.
“Our communities have the solutions. For decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have implored governments to take real action on reducing the number of our children behind bars.” They concluded by urging Governments to “invest in self-determined supports that address children’s unmet needs, not prisons.”
The report was endorsed by several human rights organisations. It notes the absence of a national Human Rights Act in Australia, as well as a failure to fully incorporate human rights obligations into domestic law, as contributing factors to the inadequate protection of Indigenous children.
The number of First Nations people in custody continues to rise. In 2023-24, there were 162 recorded instances of self-harm and attempted suicide by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in custody across Australia. The Australian Productivity Commission this year reported that Indigenous children aged 10-17 were almost 27 times more likely than their non-Indigenous counterparts to be in detention in 2023-24, and those aged 10-13 were 46 times more likely.
The full complaint can be read on the Human Rights Law Centre website.
