Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions -
Regional Workshop on National
Human Rights Institutions,
Human Rights Education, Media and Racism
Challenges for National Human Rights Institutions: human rights education, media and racism
Opening address by Dr William
Jonas AM,
Race Discrimination Commissioner and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Social Justice Commissioner,
Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
15 July 2002
Senator Marise Payne,
Mr Brian Burdekin - the Special Adviser on National Human Rights Institutions
to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Representatives of members of the Asia Pacific Forum,
Representatives from other National Human Rights Institutions both within
the Asian region (from Korea, Malaysia and Thailand) as well as from South
Africa and Uganda,
Our distinguished visitors from overseas and
Distinguished guests.
I would like to commence by acknowledging the Gadigal clan of the Eora nation, the traditional custodians of the land where we are meeting today. And thank you Alan Madden for your welcome to country.
I am the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The President of the Commission, Professor Alice Tay, is unable to be with us for this workshop due to overseas commitments, and so it is my task to welcome you to this workshop on behalf of the Australian Commission.
This workshop has been organised by the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, with the support of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Funding for participants and speakers has also been provided by the Australian government through AusAid and for our African guests by the British Council. I would like to thank these organisations for their contributions to this workshop, which would not have occurred without their support.
It is my great pleasure to welcome our international guests to Australia and to welcome everybody to this important workshop. I congratulate the Asia Pacific Forum for having the foresight to organise this workshop on the topic of 'Human Rights Education, Media and Racism - the Challenges for National Human Rights Institutions'.
As anyone who attended the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa last year will know, issues relating to racism in all its forms are complex and difficult. They present great challenges for all of us, wherever we are situated. These difficulties were certainly reflected in the negotiation process for the World Conference as well as in the debates on the conference outcomes at ECOSOC and the General Assembly that followed.
Yet despite these difficulties, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action [1] produced by the World Conference were still able to identify contemporary manifestations of racism and related intolerance and the key sectors in which reforms are needed so that racism can be tackled successfully. Particular emphasis was placed on precisely those sectors that are the subject of this workshop - education, media and national institutions.
Education and awareness-raising were seen as integral, if not central, components of strategies to overcome and prevent racism at the international, regional and national levels. The Conference recognised that 'education at all levels and all ages… in particular human rights education, is a key to changing attitudes and behaviour based on racism… and to promoting tolerance and respect for diversity in societies'. [2]
The Conference noted 'with regret' that "certain media, by promoting false images and negative stereotypes of vulnerable individuals or groups of individuals, particularly of migrants and refugees, have contributed to the spread of xenophobic and racist sentiments among the public and in some cases have encouraged violence by racist individuals and groups".[3] At the same time, the Conference also welcomed the positive contribution which could be made by the media and by new information and communications technologies such as the internet, drawing attention to its potential to create educational and awareness-raising networks against racism. [4]
The important role of national human rights institutions in education and public awareness activities to combat racism was also emphasised. [5] The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also recently recognised the importance of this role for national institutions in its latest General Recommendation, Number 28, on follow-up to the World Conference.
Just prior to the World Conference, representatives of approximately 70 national human rights institutions, regional bodies and other relevant specialised institutions met in Johannesburg to prepare a joint statement to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related intolerance. [6]
In this statement, which I think was the first common position adopted by national institutions at the international level, we made a number of commitments relating to our role in combating racism and racial discrimination. These included that national human rights institutions, established and operating in compliance with the Paris Principles,
will pay special attention to preventing racism and work with the appropriate institutions to ensure that educational authorities and other relevant institutions integrate human rights, anti-racism, tolerance, diversity and respect for others into their work and institutions…; and
will work with media, including journalists, to ensure the development and implementation of public information campaigns in plain and accessible language, enhance diversity of ownership, encourage the media to avoid 'ethnic profiling' or the stereotyping of any group, whether an ethnic, racial, national, cultural, religious or linguistic group and to stress the value of cultural diversity and a gender perspective. [7]
This workshop gives the representatives of national human rights institutions participating here an invaluable opportunity to engage in a dialogue with representatives of media, as well as to undertake skills development training, in order to enhance our capacity to undertake these important roles.
And we should be frank over the next two days in acknowledging the scope of the challenges that we face as national human rights institutions in undertaking education and awareness raising programs, as well as engaging in a constructive relationship with the media about issues related to racism. For it is a challenging task.
National institutions perform a wide range of roles. We investigate and perhaps mediate or adjudicate on complaints and may provide reparations for victims of human rights violations. We monitor and evaluate the actions of our own governments on behalf of citizens and residents. We disseminate information about human rights and advise on their implementation in domestic law and policy. We educate the public about their human rights and how to enforce them. So we need to be multi-skilled and strategic in the approaches that we choose to deploy on particular issues. This is a constant challenge for national institutions, as we continually re-evaluate how to deliver our message in the most effective or efficient way.
National institutions also often face significant resource constraints, both financial and human. Yet educational and awareness raising activities are generally very expensive. Perhaps the main challenge we face is having to target scant resources to make the widest impact. I will shortly give some examples of approaches that the Australian Commission has undertaken to this end.
One of the complications we face in Australia is the fact of our federal system of government. Frequently the government whose human rights performance we need to criticise will be one of the States or even a local, municipal, government. Monitoring them all in a comprehensive fashion is beyond our capacity, but we must address significant concerns whenever they arise. The federal system also presents a barrier when we try to influence school education. Each State and Territory has its own school education system and there is no one national curriculum.
We have also found that our message about international human rights standards and their domestic interpretation can be perceived as too legalistic or not of sufficient interest of itself for media, unless there is a conflict angle. This is particularly the case in Australia in the reporting of Indigenous and ethnic minority issues.
Media is also, increasingly, a commercial venture with a narrow ownership base. With the expansion of access to new technologies, national borders are also rapidly dissolving as they relate to media. An increasing proportion of Australian programming, for example, is imported from the United States and from Britain.
I am delighted that Dr Mohamedou is participating in this workshop and will be able to discuss in some detail the outcomes of research conducted by the International Council on Human Rights Policy in recent years into human rights reporting by the media. That report, titled Journalism, media and the challenge of human rights reporting, notes that:
- In the last decade
human rights issues have taken on increased prominence in the media,
with the mass media making reference to human rights more often and
more systematically;
- But that many
human rights issues remain under-reported by the media, with much reporting
focusing on conflicts rather than human rights issues that are less
visible or slower processes; and
- That the media do not explain or contextualise human rights information as well as they might. [8]
The report argues that 'international (and also regional and local) journalists and editors are under a professional (rather than moral) duty to report and explain human rights issues as precisely as they report in other domains - give the facts, avoid bias, provide context. At present this is not done well enough and, as a result, audiences that rely on the media to inform them are not in a position to understand or judge properly the actions or policies of governments and other authorities.' [9]
This is certainly an issue in Australia with a relatively poor understanding of human rights and the international human rights system demonstrated by media outlets on a regular basis.
To give an example, Australia appeared before four UN human rights treaty committees two years ago. The concluding observations of those committees, particularly the CERD and the Human Rights Committee, were met with great hostility by the government and by many commentators in the media. Unfortunately, much of this hostility was reflected in grossly inaccurate reporting and descriptions of the human rights system. Basic issues such as the capacity in which members of the various committees undertook their role; to the nature and purpose of the periodic reporting process and the concluding observations of the committees were incorrectly reported - often fuelled by statements by government ministers. These often basic misconceptions were by and large not identified by the media or their veracity tested.
And last year in my capacity as Race Discrimination Commissioner I held forums on racism across Australia in the lead up to the World Conference. One of the constant issues raised was the importance of the media in influencing public opinion, and the concern that there was a need for further measures to be undertaken to ensure that the media address racism rather than fostering it. This is a generalisation of course and there was much acknowledgement by people of the positive role played by the media as well.
Nevertheless, these examples illustrate that national human rights institutions have a valuable role to play in assisting media to meet the challenges that they face in reporting stories raising human rights issues. One thing we can do is to provide factual, accurate and easy to understand material about human rights and racism.
One of the most successful educational projects that the Australian Commission has undertaken is a booklet aimed largely at the media, school students and the general community titled Face the Facts. This publication, currently in its second edition, takes a number of common misconceptions relating to Indigenous people, migrants and refugees and provides factual information which shows that often the public perception or understanding is quite different from the actual situation. For example, comparative statistics clearly demonstrate that Australia is not being "swamped by refugees". Other statistics clearly demonstrate the extent of Indigenous disadvantage in this country. National policies of multiculturalism and affirmative action for Indigenous people are simply explained.
This booklet has been widely distributed among community groups, public libraries and schools, as well as being accessible on the internet.
The Commission has also undertaken larger scale projects, such as conducting national inquiries. Brian Burdekin will speak about the mechanics of these later in the workshop so I'll just give a brief example of a national inquiry and their potential to influence public debate and educate the general community. In 1997, the Commission published the report of its national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, titled Bringing them home. The inquiry had been conducted over a two year period with extensive public and private hearings. The inquiry was established to examine the impact of laws and policies over the course of much of the twentieth century which saw Indigenous children of mixed ancestry forcibly removed from their families and communities.
The publication of the report, a lengthy and complex document which included numerous recommendations, was accompanied by a community guide to the key findings of the report, a video, and website materials including the answers to frequently asked questions about the policies of removal, their impact and the report's recommendations for addressing the resultant harm. There was also significant contact with media and advocacy groups to bring the findings of the report to the attention of the general community.
The coverage of the report's findings was perhaps unprecedented and it can legitimately be claimed that the report has led to a much greater understanding in the Australian community about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and the historical antecedents to the situation currently faced by many Indigenous people. In fact, over five years after the publication of the report it remains a matter of national significance and discussion.
The special value of a national inquiry is that it puts personal individual experiences of discrimination or other rights violation on the public stage; it enables the public to hear and understand the harm which has been done and it names that harm as a human rights violation thus making concrete an otherwise abstract concept; and it makes recommendations for remedies and avoiding repetition, thus resolving a story with justice, telling the public how a human rights solution will work.
The Commission is currently conducting another national inquiry, this time examining the treatment of children in immigration detention centres, Most of these children are asylum seekers. This inquiry too is receiving extensive publicity as public hearings proceed across the country. Hearings are being held this week in Sydney and you will no doubt read about it in the newspapers in the coming days.
There are many other examples of education programs about human rights and racism that have been developed by the Commission over the past sixteen years or so; and no doubt there are also many examples of programs that have been developed by other national institutions participating in this workshop. I very much look forward to the discussions about these different approaches over the course of the workshop so that we can all learn from each other's experiences.
Through the various sessions over the next two days we will be exposed to a number of different approaches to the challenges faced by national human rights institutions. The issues to be discussed range from the use of public inquiries as an education tool; the role of the internet; relationships with non-governmental organisations and community based media. A substantial component of the workshop is also devoted to media training.
The analytical and promotional tools at our disposal are wide-ranging. The workshop should contribute to the expertise with which we utilise these tools, and assist us in deciding strategically which option we should take in a particular context in order to best communicate our message and to get maximum benefit from our limited resources.
Once again, on behalf of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of Australia, welcome to the workshop and I look forward to our deliberations over the next two days.
Thank you.
Notes
2. Durban Declaration, para 95.
3. Durban Declaration, para 89.
4. Programme of Action, paras 140-141.
5. Programme of Action, para 90.
6. UN Doc: A/CONF.189/Misc.1
7. Paras 7 and 9.
8. International Council on Human Rights Policy, Journalism, media and the challenge of human rights reporting, Summary.
9. Ibid.
Last updated 19 September 2002
