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Submission to National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from
the Australian Federation of University Women Inc.
Introduction
The Australian Federation of University Women is one of seventy-one national affiliates of the International Federation of University Women. Founded in 1922, it pursues educational initiatives to advance of the status and well-being of women and girls privately and publicly, nationally and internationally, and it attempts to further peace and international co-operation through the development of understanding and friendship between women of the world irrespective of race, nationality, religion or political opinion. Membership is open to any woman residing in Australia who holds a degree from a recognised university or college worldwide.
While concerned with general issues of human rights, AFUW has a particular commitment to supporting the human rights of women and girl children, and interventions it has taken to date on immigration and refugee issues have tended to concentrate on the situation of women and children.
Examples of representations made by AFUW concerning asylum seekers are attached in Appendix A to demonstrate that it has for some time been our belief that the policies pursued by the Australian government in dealing with asylum seekers are inconsistent with its obligations under various international treaties and instruments that require it to respect the human rights of those seeking asylum and refugee status. In particular, AFUW believes that the human rights of asylum seekers in general are abrogated by the following aspects of the immigration policies and practices:
- Mandatory detention, justified in part by the wrongful description of asylum seekers as 'illegal' and hence meriting treatment as criminals;
- Detention under conditions which by their harshness and isolation constitute a form of punishment;
- Detention under off-shore arrangements where supervision of the physical and mental health of refugees cannot be guaranteed and where access to legal assistance, education, and community support is effectively denied;
- Detention for periods of time well in excess of what might be regarded as reasonable for the screening asylum seekers both for a prima facie case for refugee status and for their health situation.
AFUW has been strengthened in these opinions by the eight background papers provided by Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. We submit that the information in these papers makes it abundantly clear that Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in general is in breach of a number of international treaties, rules and guidelines to which Australia is a signatory.
We would also like to draw attention to an aspect of Australia's stance on the definition of a refugee which impacts upon the treatment of children. Australia refuses to accord refugee status to women who have fled from, or been displaced from, their home country by domestic violence or sexual violence resulting from armed conflict. While persecution and threat to life on the grounds of gender is not specified as one of the grounds of systemic persecution used to establish refugee status, many would argue that persecution on the grounds of gender is indeed systemic in certain societies and situations, and that the demonstrated inability of an applicant to gain protection within the social context from which she has fled should be grounds for asylum. Women fleeing from sexual and domestic violence are likely to be accompanied by their children, who are thus cast into the same limbo as their mothers.
Effects of Australia's detention regime on children
With respect to the focus of the present inquiry, AFUW would submit that the adverse effect of the breaches of human rights involved in Australia's detention practices is especially intense in the case of children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child attempts to ensure that children lead lives in which their physical, mental and emotional health are protected from violence, abuse and neglect, and in which their developmental potential can be realised.
Detention of child refugees and asylum seekers is specified in Article 37 (b) of the Convention as a matter of last resort. Australia makes it a matter of automatic resort, even for the most vulnerable of groups of children, unaccompanied minors.
Children are being detained in an abnormal physical environment; they are surrounded by adults who are either in effect prison guards or fellow refugees who are often in states of psychological and emotional distress that make it unlikely that they can provide the nurturing required for children's social and mental development. These child detainees are also deprived of normal social relationships with other children and of adequate facilities for physical and mental development.
This situation must have serious consequences, especially when prolonged. And prolonged may mean something quite different with regard to a child as against an adult. Twelve months in the life of a child (as reported in the case of an infant girl born in the Maribyrnong Detention Centre and still there for her first birthday) constitute a major developmental period which can be irreparably stunted by the socially and intellectually impoverished environment of Australia's detention centres. Reports of visits to detention centres provide evidence that these centres are indeed socially and intellectually impoverished (See the Report of the Human Rights Commissioner's Visit to Curtin Detention Centre in July 2000, the Flood Inquiry into Immigration Detention Procedures of February 2001, and the February 2002 Report of the Visit of HREOC Officers to the Woomera Detention Centre). And it must be of concern that evidence in statistics available from reputable sources show that
- at 20 November 2001 by far the greatest number of refugees classed as minors were in the most remote and harsh detention centres-117 at Port Hedland and 293 at Woomera (Dept of Immigration figures);
- between 2000 and 2001, the percentage of children detained for periods in excess of 12 months increased from 2.8% to 14.3% (Flood Report)
We would submit that it is in essence the mandatory and prolonged nature of detention that leads to child asylum seekers being deprived of a wide range of the human rights accorded them by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That such deprivation is extended in some cases by the conditions of the 'temporary protection visa' accorded to those children who do achieve refugee status is outside the scope of the present inquiry, but we would recommend it for further investigation by HREOC.
For the remainder of this submission we wish specifically to address issues of access to, and quality of, education, this being a core concern of our organisation.
Education of Child Asylum Seekers: A Right Protected by Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
AFUW submits that it is only situations of community release (or at least Open Detention in a suitably resourced location) that can meet the rights of child refugees to have access to an education that is both of a comparable quality to that afforded to Australian children and responsive to the special needs resulting from their situation as refugees (e.g. special language services, recognition of cultural identity, counselling for behavioural problems resulting from traumatic experiences and social dislocation) . Such a system of community release is achieved by a number of other countries, and we do not believe that its management is beyond the capacity of the Australian government and the Australian education system.
For legislative and regulatory proposals as to how these systems could work we recommend the Alternative Detention Model document prepared by the Refugee Council of Australia and available on their website at http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/alternative1.htm
The Australian government, through immigration standards developed by DIMA and the Commonwealth Ombudsman, would appear to give assent in a general way to the propriety of providing education to detained child asylum seekers However the dispersal of responsibility for educational provision between State and local government authorities as well as the contracted bodies administering detention centres makes it very easy for decision-making to be shunted from one body to another. It also makes it very difficult for interested parties to obtain accurate, adequate and systematic information as to what educational programs are in fact provided on a continuing basis in any or all of the detention centres.
Since the detention programs are the policy of the Federal government, we submit that it is the responsibility of the Federal government to issue clear and transparent guidelines requiring that systematic programs of education for minors be instituted across all detention centres. The programs should be monitored on a regular and publicly reported basis by an independent committee of educational experts, including members qualified in the areas of the special needs of children who are emotionally disturbed or disabled physically or mentally. Monitoring should not take place on an ad hoc basis as part of general and occasional reports such as those cited above.
Such a program would undoubtedly be expensive. Its expense would be much reduced if refugee children were made part of the normal school population, where there are existing mechanisms for providing and monitoring educational programs and the support services needed to ensure that all children can access and take advantage of them. This is a practical argument for releasing these children into the general community. A further practical argument springs from the fact that a majority of asylum seekers do eventually gain refugee status, even if only under a temporary protection visa. These children will therefore become resident in communities where education is not only a right, but compulsory. The sooner steps are taken to prepare them for transition into an Australian school, the smoother the transition will be for both children and schools. Schools might however with advantage adopt a program to educate Australian children on issues relating to refugees, for example the program for Years Six and Seven devised by Australian Against Racism and available on their website http://www.australiansagainstracism.org.au
AFUW knows of no report that suggests child asylum seekers have access, either in the detention centres or in local schools, to adequate pre-school, primary, secondary, higher and vocational education, as outlined in the HREOC Background Paper 6 (Education).
Such reports and anecdotal evidence as it does have tend to be to the contrary. The Report of the Human Rights Commissioner's visit to Curtin Detention Centre in July 2000, for example, describes the primary school education then offered at Curtin as basic but adequate, provided time in detention is short (italics supplied). But time in detention is not necessarily short -according to the figures provided by the Refugee Council of Australia as at June 2001 not one of Australia's six detention centres released a significant proportion of detainees within 6 months.
The Report cited above also comments on the unsatisfactoriness of the programs provided for older children. The impression that this is a significant area of failure is strengthened by the reported case of a family of three children detained with their mother at Maribyrnong. The youngest of these was allowed to attend the local school, although under escort of a Centre guard, a condition hardly conducive to normal social relationships. The two children of secondary school age were, however, refused local schooling on the grounds that their attendance would be disruptive.
Certainly it would be disruptive to the schools of communities such as Port Hedland and Woomera to have to cope with number of child detainees involved at those localities (respectively 117 and 293 as at 20 November 2001 according to DIMA figures). This is not an argument for denying these children access to community education. It is an argument for changing the location of the children.
AFUW submits that Australia is failing to meet the requirement of the Convention to provide for the educational rights of child asylum seekers. It believes that this failure, along with the failure to meet other rights protected under the Convention, is an inevitable consequence of the policy of mandatory detention and of policy implementation that involves the imposition of punitive conditions, often involving isolation and undue prolongation of the period required for processing refugee claims.
It therefore makes the following recommendations
Recommendations
1. That Australia honour its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to use detention of child asylum seekers arriving in Australia without authorisation as a method of last resort, not as mandatory;
2. That this policy be extended to family groups arriving with children;
3. That the norm for all asylum seekers should be release, as soon as possible, into local communities, or at the very least a system of Open Detention such as proposed in the Alternative Detention Model published by the Refugee Council of Australia;
4. That any period of that detention necessary for health screening and the establishment of refugee status not exceed three months;
5. That detention centres not be maintained in remote localities such as Woomera and Port Hedland,
6. Failing this recommendation, that unaccompanied minors and family groups with children not be placed in such detention centres;
7. That Australia honour its obligation under Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide child asylum seekers with an education which is both comparable in quality with that provided to Australian children and cognisant of the special needs of refugee children for support services such as special language skilling and counselling for emotional or behavioural problems resulting from traumatic experiences in their past history;
8. That wherever possible the education of child asylum seekers take place within local schools which have been adequately resourced to meet any special needs. Such resourcing may need to include special programs to educate Australian schoolchildren in refugee issues and cultural diversity.
9. That where children are present in detention centres and unable to access local schools educational programs be available to them which are comparable in curriculum design and in delivery to those enjoyed by Australian children
10. That the delivery of educational programs for children in detention be monitored regularly by a panel of suitably qualified education experts and that the reports of such panels be published in a form accessible to the general public.
Signed:
(Dr) Jennifer Strauss
President, Australian Federation of University Women Inc.
14 March 2002
Appendices
1. Letter of 17 December, 2000, to the Hon. Philip Ruddock, Minister for Immigration
2. Letter of 23 February 2001 to the Minister for Immigration and others
Appendix One: Documents illustrating the position of the Australian Federation of University Women on the treatment of asylum seekers.
1. Letter of 17 December, 2000, to the Hon. Philip Ruddock, Minister for Immigration
Dear Mr Ruddock,
I write to express the mounting concern of my organisation about the conditions imposed upon asylum seekers held under mandatory detention at Woomera, Port Hedland Curtin and Maribyrnong. This concern is, I assure you, not simply a reaction to the more alarming allegations of abuses of human rights that have appeared recently in the media. There has in fact been for some time a growing a body of very reasonable and carefully expressed press material that addresses the fundamental human rights issue that these people, many of them fleeing from appallingly oppressive regimes, are effectively imprisoned in Australia. Imprisoned moreover for prolonged periods in remote places under harsh physical and psychological conditions which, I believe, Australians would not tolerate for our own citizens who have actually been convicted by due process of criminal offences.
As an example of such reasoned and principled objections to the current treatment of asylum seekers, I would draw your attention to the enclosed article by Professor Tay, President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I would also point out that public concern at reports of abuses in these detention centres is exacerbated by the general refusal to open them to public scrutiny. This does not only extend to resisting visits by external UN committees. There seems to be an unreasonable delay in publishing the report of the Australian Commission's visits in 2000 to Woomera and Curtin, and today in Melbourne we had the unedifying spectacle of the Maribyrnong centre refusing to allow the press to witness Amnesty International giving Christmas presents to the children imprisoned there.
According to the report of this incident there are some two hundred children currently in detention at the various centres-and of course a number of children now in the Australian community who had to spend an unconscionable time in detention before their parents were accepted as meeting the very stringent criteria for being accepted as a refugee. This is a situation so appalling that I find it hard to believe: I would be grateful therefore if you could provide me with accurate figures of the number of children currently held in all detention centres.
It is particularly the situation of women and children that calls for urgent remedial action. The Australian Federation of University Women has as its core purpose the advancement of the welfare of women and girl children through education, but we have had, from our foundation, a commitment to working to ensure an environment for women and children which is free of both political oppression and domestic violence. Apart from the apparent denial of educational and health rights to children under the current conditions of detention, there is an abundance of material from the experience of refugee and detention (concentration?) camps around the world that demonstrates that women and children in such circumstances are highly vulnerable to emotional and sexual abuse.
It has been reported that you are considering taking steps to provide group homes where women and children could be housed. We urge you most strongly to proceed immediately with this proposal. It would be at least a temporary step on the way to a more just and humane system for all asylum seekers,
Yours Sincerely
(Dr) Jennifer Strauss,
President, Australian Federation of University Women
2. Letter of 23 February 2001 to the Minister for Immigration and others
Dear Mr Ruddock,
At its Annual General Meeting of 16 February, the Australian Federation of University Women passed (nem con.) the following motion:
That the Australian Federation of University Women Inc. requests the Minister for Immigration, Multicultural Affairs and Aboriginal Affairs, the Hon. Philip Ruddock, to bring an immediate end to the incarceration of women and children under harsh conditions in remote and isolated localities as a result of the current government policy of mandatory detention of unauthorised refugees and asylum seekers.
AFUW has an obligation, both through its own policies and through those of its international body, the International Federation of University Women, to endeavour to protect the welfare of all women and children, and in particular to strive for the fulfilment of the various United Nations Conventions on the treatment of women and children who are victims of war, civil unrest, oppressive regimes or domestic violence. As Australian citizens, we are saddened to have to conclude that Australia's treatment of unauthorised asylum seekers breaches such conventions, both in the very fact of automatic detention, as well as in its nature and its often lengthy duration. A year is a very long time in the life of a child. And what is a child to make of the country that guards them so closely that they are not even permitted to see the faces or hear the voices of its citizens who come to bring them Christmas gifts, as was the case at the Maribyrnong detention centre last Christmas?
We do not oppose Australia's right to screen those seeking residence or temporary refuge in this country. We had hoped, however, that your recent visit to Sweden would convince you of the feasibility as well as the desirability of systems whereby unauthorised immigrants were released into appropriate communal settings-or at the very least, in the cases of women and children, the most vulnerable of these often severely traumatised groups, were separately accommodated in normal housing rather than camp conditions. We would point to the recent example of the French government in releasing into the general community (during processing of residence applications) the shipwrecked Kurdish victims of the unquestionably deplorable traffic in those desperate to escape from oppressive regimes.
We have also noted a recent media report that a very large percentage of Iraki and Afghan unauthorised entrants into Australia do in fact ultimately gain refugee status. If this is the case, it seems that their preceding detention may be of dubious cost benefit and must surely not be the ideal preparation for their becoming well-adjusted residents, whether temporary or permanent, in our community.
Immigration has always been a divisive issue in Australian history, but our members believe that we speak for a very solid body of public opinion which would support a more generous, compassionate and ultimately more intelligently self-interested policy than that currently pursued. We urge you to listen to that voice,
Yours
sincerely,
(Dr) Jennifer Strauss
President, Australian Federation of University Women
cc:
The Prime Minister, the Hon. John Howard
The Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Kim Beazley
The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Women's Affairs, The Hon.
Amanda Vanstone
Ms Murielle Joye, Secretary General, International Federation of University
Women, Geneva
3. Resolution on Refuges at the 28th Conference of the International Federation of University Women held in Ottawa, August 2001.
Delegates from over 70 countries voted unanimously in support of a motion proposed by the Australian Federation. It resolved to re-affirm earlier resolutions calling for the protection of the human rights of refugee women and girls; and further to encourage all national associations (a) to urge their governments to find considerate and humanitarian solutions to the problems of refugees and asylum seekers arriving in their countries; and to monitor the situation both nationally and locally and render appropriate assistance where possible; and (b) to ensure that their own members are appropriately informed or educated on the issues of refugees and asylum seekers.
4. Motion passed unanimously by Council of the Australian Federation of University Women at its Meeting of 27 October, 2001
That Australia should process unauthorised asylum seekers within Australia;
That the process should be as expeditious as possible to ensure that the validity of refugee status can be established and refugees settled with the Australian community;
That the Government should ensure that education programs are available to all those held in detention pending finalisation of their claim. Such programs should be available to adults and children;
That educational programs should continue to be available once refugees have been released into the community, in particular that specific funding should be provided to meet the costs of education for children in refugee families;
That the provisions
of the temporary protection visa should be revised so that refugees are
not deprived of the rights to education, access to health care and the
freedom of movement available to Australian citizens and their children."
