Inquiry on children in detention
By Mike Steketee, National affairs editor
The Australian, November 28, 2001.
The Howard Government is to face a public inquiry into claims of violence and denial of rights involving almost 600 children in refugee detention centres.
Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski will investigate allegations that children have been separated from their parents, that inappropriate force has been used against them, especially during disturbances, and that they have been harassed by adult detainees.
He wants to know more about the circumstances of an eight-year-old boy who he was told was held in a detention centre for more than six months. It is understood he is now staying with a foster family.
Dr Ozdowski will report after public hearings next year on whether Australia has breached its responsibilities to hold children only as a last resort and for the shortest possible time, to give them access to legal help and the right to challenge their detention and to provide an adequate education.
These are all obligations that Australia accepted when it signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990.
Other countries with detention centres keep children for only short periods before releasing them into the community. Sweden requires that children be held for no more than six days.
The Department of Immigration refuses to release details of how long children have been kept in camps such as Woomera and Port Hedland, but it is believed to be up to two years.
The department says there were 345 boys and 240 girls in detention centres on November 16. A spokesman said the department could not provide breakdowns by age, length of time they had been held or how many were in each centre "due to privacy concerns".
He could not explain how releasing the figures could breach privacy.
Fifty-three of the children held at present are without parents, in some cases because families have paid for their passage to take them away from danger.
Dr Ozdowski will announce the inquiry today after visiting centres on the mainland in recent months.
He said there appeared to be an increasing number of children among long-term detainees.
"We cannot really steal their childhood," Dr Ozdowski said. "If, for argument's sake, they spent two years in detention, they have legitimate expectations to have proper schooling provided and not to be psychologically harmed.
"What was apparent to me (from my visits) was that especially teenagers appear to have very little access to education in detention centres and very little access to recreation."
The basic schooling that was available often put children together of different ages and from different ethnic groups.
"Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Australia agreed to protect every child within our jurisdiction regardless of whether it is an Australian-born child or an asylum-seeking child," Dr Ozdowski said.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock did not return The Australian's calls yesterday.