I've just returned from Barwon maximum security adult prison. I found myself squatting on the floor to talk to one of our clients – a 16-year-old child – through the trapdoor to his cell. The tight steel opening so small I could only see his anxious eyes. He is being held in solitary confinement; pacing his cell, uncertain when he will be let out. He hasn't seen the sky since Thursday.
Read MoreWe need to get to the bottom of what went wrong with the riot at the Parkville Youth Justice Centre. We don’t need lazy, kneejerk populist responses, like transferring kids to adults jails, which are designed to sound tough on crime and which in fact will only make things worse.
Read MoreMalcolm Turnbull’s proposed lifetime visa ban is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and an attempt to distract us from one that does.
The proposal is absurd, the wedge politics cynical and the explanations insincere. Sadly, the fear and harm being caused is real.
Read MoreLate last year, a friend told me that we need to make sure we don't look back in the future on human rights as just a passing phase. It was a comment that kept coming back to me over the past 12 months with Brexit, the re-rise of Pauline Hanson, the hardening of Turnbull and now Trump.
Read MoreLast year, Kumanjayi Langdon, a proud and respected 59-year-old Warlpiri man from a large family, died in police custody in Darwin.
His crime? Police suspected he was drinking in a local park. He wasn’t causing any disruption and was polite and cooperative at all times.
Read MoreDragged from her cell. Handcuffed and paralysed. Hauled, dying, into the back of a police truck. This week Australia may be confronted, yet again, with images and footage of the justice system failing Aboriginal people, with devastating results.
Read MoreOur Prime Minister, Immigration Minister and Foreign Minister have spent this week in New York attending high-profile global summits on refugees. They arrived insisting that the Australian government's policies were the "best in the world", but they'll leave having offered little more than self-congratulations.
Read MoreWhile the nation's eyes have been on federal parliament bickering over the marriage equality plebiscite this week, another critical LGBTI debate began in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
Read MoreThe PNG government has conceded that the Manus facility must close. But while tearing down the fences would be a significant step, the real issue is not the future of the facility itself but of the 854 men trapped inside it.
Read MoreAustralia’s offshore camps are a house of cards. They’re unsustainable and liable to collapse amid increasing corporate aversion to complicity in abuse, legal uncertainty and human despair.
Read MorePrime Minister Malcom Turnbull's announcement of a royal commission into the abuse of children in Northern Territory jails gives an insight into his instincts on human rights.
Read MoreMonday night's Four Corners episode also revealed that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is endemic in its principal youth detention facility.
Read MoreEvery day that the Manus Island and Nauru camps stay open, people suffer. Every day that Ferrovial operates those centres, it is exposed to risk, writes the HRLC's Rachel Ball.
Read MoreThe Universal Periodic Review (UPR) has received mixed reviews about its effectiveness as a mechanism to achieve positive human rights change. However, the case study of Australia demonstrates the capacity of the UPR to open space for dialogue and facilitate positive, albeit modest, human rights progress and monitoring.
Read MoreThe PNG Supreme Court's unanimous ruling highlights the harmfulness of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in the Manus Island detention centre.
Read MoreIt’s been twenty-five years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, yet WA’s justice system remains utterly out of balance – it is destroying families and communities, writes the HRLC’s Ruth Barson.
Read MoreThis article was written for the special 2016 Children Rights Edition of the HRLC Monthly Bulletin, Rights Agenda, developed in collaboration with the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, King & Wood Mallesons and the Human Rights Law Centre.
Read MoreNSW's new anti-protest laws are the latest example of governments in Australia steadily chipping away at our democracy's foundations, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
Read MoreAttacks on environmental groups are part of an unmistakable broader trend of governments eroding many of the vital foundations our democracy, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
Read MoreKelsey Montgomery a law student at the University of Western Australia. She did a placement with the Human Rights Law Centre at the end of 2015 and has since written this piece looking at the legality of solitary confinement.
Read MoreIf Australia is serious about protecting human rights, it should codify and enforce them, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Read MoreThese are the questions that should be plaguing the WA government after an inquest heard of a brutal and inhuman death in custody, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
Read MoreKumanjayi Langdon died alone in a Darwin police cell, after being locked up under the Northern Territory’s controversial “paperless arrest” laws. His crime was drinking in a public place, an offence that carries a $74 fine.
Read MoreLegislation to create safe access zones around abortion clinics is another welcome step towards ridding our society of all forms of violence against women.
Read MoreAustralia is locking up more people than ever before and many of Australia's prison practices breach the UN's new standards, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
Read MoreIf we want justice for women in the workplace we need to see work-life balance as an important issue for men as well as women - Catherine Branson QC's 2015 Law and Justice Address.
Read MoreDon't let the crocodile tears of our politicians persuade you otherwise - punishing the survivors of risky voyages will achieve nothing but more suffering, writes our Director of Communications, Tom Clarke.
Read MoreSuccessive governments have been vying to draft the harshest refugee policies. We can do better than this, writes Hugh de Kretser. Read More
Another Aboriginal person was locked up for minor offences and died in custody. On these bare facts alone, as a nation we should be outraged, writes Eddie Cubillo.
Read MoreThe HRLC's Tom Clarke looks at whether the back-peddling has already begun on Indonesia's announcement that it will let foreign journalists into West Papua.
Read MoreThe HRLC’s Anna Brown contributed an essay on progress on the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the Oceania region to ILGA's 10th edition of its State-Sponsored Homophobia Report.
Read MoreThe Australian government should come clean on its role in the US drone program before buying its own, writes the HRLC's Emily Howie.
Read MoreChan & Sukumaran have been denied the chance to learn from their mistakes. We owe it to them to learn from ours, writes the HRLC's Daniel Webb.
Read MoreWhile ongoing commitments and efforts to secure the rights of the world’s women and girls are commendable, on no measure can we say that our work is done, writes Natasha Stott Despoja, Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls.
Read MoreThere’s no question that 2014 was a big year for LGBTI equality in Victoria, but there’s still unfinished business on our wish list for 2015 writes the HRLC’s Anna Brown.
Read MoreScott Morrison's Migration and Maritime Powers Bill is a truly appalling piece of legislation. Its repugnance is surpassed only by the tactics used to secure its passage, writes the HRLC's Daniel Webb.
Read MoreWe cannot close the gap when so many indigenous men, women and children are behind bars, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
Read MoreHRLC Executive Director, Hugh de Kretser, delivered a speech at the Australian Communities Foundation’s end of year event. Here’s what he had to say.
Read MoreAustralia recently argued before the Committee Against Torture that violence against women does not fall within the Committee’s mandate. Australia was unequivocally wrong to do so – both legally and ethically, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson
Read MoreWhile the public outrage at Blessington and Elliot's crime was justified, the subsequent campaign of populist and retrospective law reform was not, writes the HRLC's Daniel Webb.
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