There’s a venerable principle of criminal law that seems to be turning on its head in Western democracies, and a number of human rights along with it. The principal begins with an acceptance of the fact that no system of criminal justice will ever be inerrant. There will always be wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals. […]
A friend of mine has sent me some good news about girls in Afghanistan: they are for the first time playing competitive football in Kabul, at the Ministry of Defence sports field, no less. Presenting a trophy to the Maiwand team, the UN Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ameerah Haq, noted that five years ago, […]
Greetings to all breastfeeding women! It’s World Breastfeeding Week and what better time to take a rights-based approach to breastfeeding? We all have a right to health. More fully expressed, it is a right to the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health." Well, the highest available standard of health, both in infancy and […]
It couldn’t last. Two good-news posts in a row (25 July), but now I’m afraid my subject matter turns to human rights hell. Since the de facto privatisation of the health system in China in the early 1980s, most Chinese can’t afford decent medical care. Meanwhile, human organs are sold to rich Chinese and foreigners […]
A momentous act of the nascent UN Human Rights Council cannot go unheralded. Who would have thought this brand new institution — created earlier this year to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights, but ranking alongside the Security Council — would take the plunge and adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? […]
"Simply put, we [Australians] do not have to listen to any one else. We are the bench mark. The rest of the world needs to catch up . . . Who cares what the UN thinks? They have achieved nothing in their history. "Talk, talk, talk . . . that is all the UN does. […]
A little bit of human rights history was made in south-eastern Australia yesterday when the parliament of Victoria passed laws protecting civil and political rights. The Australian Capital Territory has had a Human Rights Act since 2004, but this is the first major jurisdiction in Australia, the first state, to pass human rights legislation. Western […]
Outgoing UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has previously condemned the US-led war on Iraq as illegal. He has also called for the detention camps at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to be closed. Yesterday, he praised the Bush Administration‘s decision to respect Guantánamo detainees’ inalienable legal rights to the protection afforded by common article 3 of the […]
Michael Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of Melbourne's only broadsheet, The Age, and now its US correspondent, does not mince his words. He describes David Hicks, that 30 year-old British-Australian on whose behalf I and many others have argued vigorously for a fair trial or else release from Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay, as "obviously innocent." It […]
Even Afghanistan insisted its citizens be released from Guantánamo. Why is David Hicks, with dual British and Australian citizenship, still there after nearly five years? Why is anyone still there after the decision of the US Supreme Court that the proposed military tribunals are unlawful? Why is Australia still supporting the continued detention and attempts […]
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