A last resort?
National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention
The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be … used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Few people would disagree with this fundamental principle from the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In fact, most Australians would agree that every possible option should be explored before a child is locked up. However, Australia's immigration policy makes the detention of children who arrive without visas the first and only option and it puts no limit on the time that they can be detained.
Australians don't need a team of experts or dramatic media stories to convince them that detention centres are no place for children. However, this Inquiry analysed evidence from a large number of sources to objectively assess the environment in which children have been held.
The results are clear. Immigration detention centres expose children to enormous mental distress - which confirms the need to ensure that children should only be locked up in this environment as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.
More than 92% of all children arriving by boat since 1999 have been recognised by Australian authorities to be refugees. In the case of Iraqi children the figures are as high as 98%.
And yet we have welcomed these children by taking them to remote facilities and detaining them there to wait for an outcome on their visa application.
Children regularly wait for months or years in detention. In fact, as at the end of 2003, the majority of children in detention had been held for more than two years. This policy seems a complete departure from the principle of detention as a measure of last resort.
The irony is that the long-term impact of Australia's immigration detention system on these children will, in the main, be borne by Australian society, since almost all children in detention eventually become members of the Australian community. They will carry the scars of their detention experience throughout their lives.
It is worth noting that, despite ten years of a mandatory detention regime, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs' own administrative measures and instructions virtually ignored the special needs of children. There was also little regard paid to obligations arising from the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This state of affairs changed somewhat in late 2001 - about the same time that this Inquiry was established.
Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM
Human Rights Commissioner
April 2004
Since then there have been some positive measures to improve the environment in which children in detention live. I commend the Department for introducing these changes without awaiting the formal outcome of this Inquiry.
However, it is disappointing that these measures did not occur much, much earlier. Furthermore, they ultimately represent a band-aid approach to repairing a detention system that is fundamentally flawed. The only real solution is to change the policy as a whole.
While recognising the right of Australia to protect its borders, I hope that this report removes, once and for all, any doubts about the harmful effects of long term immigration detention on children. It is now time for our parliamentarians to change our immigration laws to respect the human rights of children - rights that Australia has agreed to uphold.
Let no child who arrives in Australia ever suffer under this system again.