HUMAN RIGHTS CHALLENGE

With United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in the country at the moment, the Australian government is on notice that it could very well be in breach of the United Nations refugee convention if its proposed deal with Malaysia for processing asylum seekers goes ahead.

For her, it is not enough to hear verbal assurances that the key elements regarding the processing and treatment of refugees will be adhered to. She condemns people smuggling, but while our government spends so much time debating how to stop the people smugglers dumping their desperate cargo on our shores, she challenges us to work out how to accept these people once they're here rather than sending them somewhere else.

All member countries who have ratified the UN refugee convention are reviewed by their peers to monitor whether their policies and procedures adhere to its requirements. Australia was reviewed in 2009, and questions were asked back then about prolonged mandatory detention as well as the government's intervention in Northern Territory indigenous communities. Very little has changed since then, with the consequences being played out for all to see on the nightly news.

People become homeless for many reasons, most of which are not of their own making, but to lose your home, family, friends, employment, educational opportunities, community networks, cultural identity, country itself, is to lose your sense of place in the world. To be so displaced, to have nothing of your own, nothing familiar, only adds to the trauma from which you’ve fled. You lose your sense of identity, your individuality, you become yet another nameless face on yet another boat.

In The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy wrote of the disenfranchisement of indigenous cultures.

We’re prisoners of war…we belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough….to matter.

What an indictment on our government, on us as a country, on us as individuals, if we care so little that those in dire need of a safe haven just don’t matter.