Australia's UN Involvement and Minority Mistreatment

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Australia boasts an admirable history of involvement with the United Nations, being one of its founding members in 1945, as well as drafting, and assenting to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, despite these notable humanitarian endeavours, Australia’s treatment of minority groups, namely Aboriginals and asylum seekers, has been anything but humane. Australia’s praiseworthy association with the United Nations, and its efforts in peace-keeping operations, are belied by degrading treatment of its Indigenous populace, and callous conduct towards asylum seekers.

The separation of ‘the stolen generation’ is a gross violation of Article 1 of the UDHR. The magnitude of this breach is apparent, not just in its contempt for Aboriginal …show more content…

According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, there are 2013 people in immigration detention facilities, and 1189 people in community detention in Australia. This includes 127 children in immigration detention facilities and 642 children in community detention. These statistics are indicative of the scale of refugees displaced by the government’s pejorative policies, and allude to the breadth of injustices inflicted upon the most vulnerable people of all. Indeed the depth of these injustices is most apparent at the infamous detention centres themselves. Indefinite detention is not just psychologically depressing, the conditions at the detention centres are violations of not just article 14, but also article 5 of the UDHR, with the ‘United Nations Special Rapportuer on Torture’ finding that harsh conditions and merciless violence in detention centres such as those on Manus island are in shocking violation of the Convention Against Torture, ratified by Australia. Such international decrial is a clear sign that Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers is in breach of the UDHR. The conditions that infants and children in these detention centres are subject to present further breaches of the UDHR, this time contravening the convention on ‘The Rights of a Child.’ The Australian government’s inhumane handling of asylum seekers is a stark violation of articles 5 and 14 of the UN, and its transgression of the convention of ‘The Rights of a Child’ educed denouncement from the UN, defaming Australia’s involvement with the United

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