Australia has delivered ‘strikingly poor’ results on a new human rights scorecard

Human rights observance in Australia has not improved over the past year, and the government’s responses to the coronavirus pandemic have caused a number of violations, particularly for vulnerable populations, human rights experts say.

The observations are made in the latest tracker from the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), which logs and compares the human rights performance of countries around the world.

Researchers analyzed data from international databases and interviewed human rights experts to calculate a range of values ​​for around 200 countries over the course of 2020.

The latest tracker for Australia has “many positive results,” the researchers say, but also some “strikingly poor results, particularly with regard to who is most at risk of infringement”.

A Black Lives Matter demonstration in Sydney last year.

AP

“It is certainly true that Aborigines and residents of the Torres Strait Islands, people with disabilities, people of low socio-economic status, and refugees and asylum seekers are identified as at risk of violating almost every right we measure,” said Thalia Kehoe Rowden , Head of HRMI Strategy SBS News.

For four rights – education, nutrition, health and work – the tracker gave Australia a “poor” rating of 7.9 out of 10 because it has the resources to possibly fully uphold these rights, which is compared to other countries with high income is almost average.

Last year, Australia received a score of 8.5. That year New Zealand got a score of 8.4 and the US got 7.5.

Australians were this year protected by the state as “fair” with a score of 6.5 – a category that measures things like freedom from torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary or political arrest. The USA scored 4.2 points.

HRMI 2021

Experts identified the Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as particularly at risk, including arrest, imprisonment and torture, and failing to exercise their rights to education, health, housing and work.

People with disabilities were particularly at risk of their rights to housing, health and employment and of being less exposed to ill-treatment.

‘Very disappointing’

HRMI co-founder Anne-Marie Brook said Australia’s performance on civil and political rights was “very disappointing, especially as it could be so easily improved”.

“I look forward to the day when the people of Australia, through their elected officials, will decide to treat all people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, refugees and asylum seekers, with the dignity and respect that they do all people deserve. ”She said.

The HRMI is hosted by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, a New Zealand-based research institute, and is based on surveys of hundreds of human rights experts around the world, including lawyers, attorneys, journalists and NGOs.

Researchers also surveyed experts in 39 countries in February and March this year about the impact of COVID-19 on human rights in their country.

A public residential tower in the north of Melbourne.

AAP

In Australia, experts said human rights had been negatively impacted by the pandemic.

As examples of poor results, they cited cases where people in lockdown were not provided with culturally appropriate food, people in nursing homes were not admitted to hospitals, and visa holders and undocumented people were denied access to income support.

The Victorian Ombudsman said late last year that human rights were violated when the state government launched an immediate tough lockdown on nine council housing towers in Melbourne in July.

Worldwide, the impact of the pandemic on human rights was “completely negative,” said Kehoe Rowden.

“We had hoped there might be some optimistic moments when governments seized opportunities to accommodate the homeless, for example, but the overall impact has been completely negative and dramatically negative in many countries,” she said.

“The right to education has been disrupted with school closings around the world, and unfortunately this has had an uneven impact on populations already at risk – if you don’t have the internet or reliable device to access online training, yours will proper education will be more affected than with wealthier classmates. “

Ms. Kehoe Rowden said some countries have also used the pandemic as an excuse to crack down on human rights, something Amnesty International also noted in its annual global snapshot in April.