Australia: indigenous women left behind
Australia places violence against women high on the agenda but indigenous women left behind, says UN expert
GENEVA (03 March 2017) – The United
Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its
causes, and consequences Dubravka Šimonović has called on
the Government of Australia to take all necessary steps to
ensure that all women in the country are included in its
efforts to prevent and combat violence against
women.
“Violence against women in Australia has
recently been recognized as a pandemic by political leaders
at the highest levels of Government. However despite the
strong political will to address the issue, violence against
women is disturbingly common in Australia” said the expert
at the end of her first official visit* to the country.
Throughout her visit to different jurisdictions, the expert praised examples of good practice, such as the development of data collection on women’s killings, as well as relevant legislative and policy reforms, including the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022 and initiatives related to prevention like ‘OUR WATCH’ project.
However, the Rapporteur identified issues of concern in relation to the overall protection of women from violence. “Women's human rights in Australia are protected in an incomplete, patchwork way in different States and Territories. The rights set out in the international human rights conventions like CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) are not directly applicable and not fully incorporated into the national legal system, and the consequences are that those rights are not legally enforceable. There is a need to harmonize the legal framework with CEDAW and to strengthen the integration of human rights into laws and policies at every level of Government,” said Ms. Šimonović.
She further noted
that domestic/family violence is one of the leading causes
of homelessness in Australia and remarked: “It is
essential that women escaping violence can access affordable
and safe housing and that the barriers towards doing this
are removed.”
The expert also highlighted that the
current funding for services and civil society organizations
providing support to female victims of violence is not
sustainable and at risk of being cut further: “I call on
the Government to provide the necessary funding to match the
current and future needs of women who are seeking advice and
assistance to protect their lives in line with its human
rights obligations,” she said.
During her visit, Ms. Šimonović also noted with concern that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are mostly left behind by general policies to tackle violence. Highlighting the institutional, systemic, multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination that these women face she also made clear that, in addition to sexism and racism, many women are victims of class-based discrimination due to their low socio-economic status, as well as social exclusion accentuated by their regional or remote geographical location. These factors manifest themselves in an alarmingly high prevalence of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who continue to experience higher rates of domestic and family violence and more severe forms of such violence as compared to other women. For example, they are 32 times more likely to be hospitalized because of domestic/family violence and up to 3.7 times more likely than other women to be victims of sexual violence.”
“I call upon the Government to consider widening the
specific National Action plans on violence against
indigenous women, with increased funding and to consider the
adoption of specific empowerment measures including
temporary special measures that would accelerate the
advancement of indigenous women and allow them to break free
of violence and abuse” the expert stated.
The Special
Rapporteur also emphasized that Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander women and girls have been the fastest growing
prison population group across Australia. She expressed
concern about their over-incarceration, prison-overcrowding,
strip searching, solitary confinement, lack of any
alternative to custodial sentences, in particular for women
with dependent children, inappropriate access to health care
and the inadequacy of re-entry programme to prevent
reoffending.
"Most of the women I visited were
incarcerated for minor, non-violent offences, such as
stealing, fraud, and breaches of domestic violence orders. I
am also concerned that women and girls on remand or
pre-trial detention are held together with convicted women,
which raises serious concerns under article 10 (2) of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” said
the expert. In that regard, she called on the Government to
act now and to review its policy of incarceration of women
especially for unpaid fines, which has a disproportionate
effect on the rates of imprisonment of Aboriginal women
because of their economic and social disadvantage. The
expert also urged the Government to apply the United Nations
Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial
Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules).
The
Special Rapporteur is also concerned about the lack of
adequate policies to protect vulnerable women and reports of
asylum-seekers and refugees women and girls transferred
temporarily to Australia on medical grounds, including women
who have been raped, who are in onshore detention and face
return to the Regional Processing Centre (RPC) in Nauru.
During her fifteen-day visit, the Special Rapporteur
visited five out of the six state level governments (New
South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and
Tasmania) as well as the Australian Capital Territory and
the Northern Territory. The expert met with representatives
of each Government, the relevant authorities and civil
society organisations, as well as with UN officials. She
also visited the women’s correctional facility in Brisbane
and shelters in different locations.
(*)
You can read the Special Rapporteur’s
end-of-mission statement in full here:
Ms. Dubravka
Šimonović (Croatia) was appointed as Special Rapporteur on
violence against women, its causes and
consequences by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2015, to
recommend measures, ways and means, at the national,
regional and international levels, to eliminate violence
against women and its causes, and to remedy its
consequences. Ms. Šimonović has been member of the CEDAW
Committee from 2002 to 2014. She headed the Human Rights
Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Republic of Croatia and was the Minister Plenipotentiary at
the Permanent Mission of Croatia to the UN in New York. She
was also Ambassador to the OSCE and UN in Vienna. She
co-chaired the Ad hoc Committee (CAHVIO) of the Council of
Europe that elaborated the Convention on Preventing and
Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence
(Istanbul Convention).She has a PhD in Family Law and
published books and articles on human rights and women’s
rights.
The Special Rapporteurs are part
of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human
Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of
independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the
general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and
monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country
situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world.
Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis;
they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their
work. They are independent from any government or
organization and serve in their individual
capacity.
UN Human Rights, Country Page Australia