Submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
enquiry onto Children in Detention
In late November 2001, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission announced that it would conduct an inquiry into children in immigration detention. It put out a call for submissions.
The announcement came shortly after the November federal election, campaigning for which had focused strongly on issues relating to asylum seekers and the importance of “protecting our borders”. The issues had moved to occupy an unprecedented place in the national consciousness.
When HREOC announced its inquiry, a group of us decided that we would make a submission. We thought it might be useful to find out who else was making a submission, and to look at pooling resources and expertise, to compile the most useful and comprehensive submission we could. And so we started to ask around. The response was overwhelming. Within ten days, we had 40 people meeting at a private home in suburban Melbourne; four weeks later 70. People from all walks of life came together because they shared a concern about the issue of children in immigration detention.
This submission is a product of the concern, the expertise and the energy of this diverse group of people: teachers, nurses, doctors, psychologists, actors, lawyers, social workers, physiotherapists, psychiatrists, writers, students, and counsellors who gave a great deal of their time: conducting literature searches; reading volumes of reports and papers and legislation and legal cases; researching experiences of other jurisdictions around the world; and interviewing as many people as possible with both first and second hand experience of immigration detention in Australia.
This submission deals with the issues raised by the immigration detention of children from different, but inter-related, perspectives, which reflect the wide-ranging expertise and experience of its contributors. We have a chapter that deals with the health issues faced by children in detention; one that deals with the mental health effects of detention on children; one that examines the educational needs of children in detention; and finally, one that examines the legal issues raised by the practices and policies of our current system of detaining children.
More than 50 organisations have endorsed the submission.
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