Kara Gorey

Natural disasters make headlines around the world, but within weeks we forget about the death tolls and the mournful faces of those affected fade. But this does not stop their suffering.

The initial impact of the disaster brings about enormous loss of life, but it is the after effects such as homelessness, unsafe water supplies and no access to medical attention, that makes natural disasters a human rights issue.

Many Asian countries are most at risk of natural disasters, but they are also the least prepared to deal with them. The poorer the country, the less able it is to handle the aftermath, which means the most vulnerable people are pushed further into danger.

The recent catastrophes in the Asia-Pacific highlight the impact that natural disasters can have on human rights. A few months on and people are still feeling the pain.

Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia

On September 30, 2009 a powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 degrees on the Richter scale struck the West Sumatra coast in Indonesia. The epicenter was 45 kilometres from the city of Padang, which has a population of approximately 900,000 people. Two subsequent quakes measuring 6.2 and 6.8 struck within 24 hours.  

• In the Padang Pariaman and Agam districts alone there are 8,000 people displaced. The loss of homes has forced people to live out in the open, making them susceptible to diseases and giving them little access to clean water. The Government of Indonesia said that the number of severely and moderately damaged homes is 181,665.

• In West Sumatra many people rely on the rice harvest for their income, but if the irrigation canals are not immediately fixed around 7,000 hectares will have to be abandoned next season. This means that thousands of people could be left with no source of income next year. Despite this, the Indonesian government has reported that its relief fund will only cover 30% of needs.

• The UN has reported that a lack of available funds is seriously threatening education projects for children with disabilities and training programs for teachers to address the psychosocial needs of the children.

  Typhoons in the Philippines

On September 26, 2009 Tropical Storm Ketsana (also known as Ondoy) hit the Philippines and then extended into Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China. The storm caused the worst floods in Manila in 5o years, affecting over 80% of the city’s population.

Just over a week later Typhoon Parma (Pepeng) hit the Philippines. At least 1,125 people died from the combined typhoons and more than nine million were affected. 

• There are between 90,000 and 120,000 people in evacuation centres. These centres are extremely overcrowded, some have no electricity or telephones and there are no 24/7 health services available for the people living in these centres.

• There has been an outbreak of leptospirosis, a water borne disease caused by contaminated water. In some parts of the country there are still high floodwaters and evacuation centres in Manila and outlying areas are swamped with dirty water. 

• People who were living in makeshift shelters before the floods are some of the worst affected people. Being displaced and separated from their livelihoods and support structures have put the most disadvantaged section in society even more at risk.

The people of Indonesia and the Philippines, along with many other countries in the region, will feel the psychological effects of natural disasters long after their homes are rebuilt.

The series of environmental impacts in the last decade has impacted the Asian regions catastrophically, affecting the fundamental human rights of the poor, displaced, homeless and hungry.

Maja Garaca

“And so, as the election comes into distant view, and the number of refugees fleeing poverty and war in places like Sri Lanka, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq increases, Rudd Labor toughens its stance against refugees.”

 John Passant, a liberalist, wrote these words in his internet blog on the 6^th of October, 2009. These words come only days after it was reported that Sri Lankan refugees were heading on a boat to Australia intercepted in Indonesian Waters.

These refugees were fleeing from the Sinhalese Government, which is reportedly committing genocide against the Tamil people. Such cases have occurred throughout history. With the inception of war certain people are annihilated for ‘political purposes.’

 These people flee their homes and in turn are classed as refugees. Some leave their countries legally by inhibiting visas and others come to our shores on boats.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949) states: “everyone has the right to seek and enjoy other countries asylum from persecution.” However, we are commonly used to the scene of Western countries denying access to refugees, yet signing up to fight wars on foreign soil.

 Howard did it and now Rudd is doing it too. “So Australian troops and federal police invade the Solomons, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, East Timor, to say nothing of the carnage they have helped wreak on Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes John Passant.

 Rudd has shut down the detention centre in Nauru and Manus; he has abolished the temporary protection visas, refugee detention debts and indefinite detention. These are improvements for refugees coming into Australia.

 However, Rudd has continued deportations and the Christmas Island detention centre remains open. It also appears that Australian waters are slowly closing in as we head to election time.

 Passant believes that Rudd has replaced Howard’s Pacific Solution with a similar policy which is equally inhumane.

  “Howard’s 2001 election pitch – we shall decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come – is actually the policy foundation for Rudd’s refugee racism,” says Passant.

  John Gibson, President of the Refugee Council of Australia, disagrees with Passant as he sees a significant change in Australia’s approach to refugees since Rudd has come to power.

  “Rather than deterrence the government has stressed border protection and a humane approach, through the abolishment (sic) of temporary protection visas and the Pacific Solution,” says Gibson.

 However, Gibson admits that keeping refugees in detention centres is not humane.

 He states that the refugees on Christmas Island don’t receive adequate legal help. They can suffer from psychological instability because they are kept within a fenced complex for uncertain periods of time.

“Evidence shows that being kept in detention centres has disastrous effects on children and young adults. An example is the Tempa people, 27 people were in detention for years and in 2005 they were brought back (to Australia) due to psychological damage,” says Gibson.

Both Gibson and Passant agree that the media has played a large role in exasperating the asylum seekers situation by inspiring fear amongst the Australian population.

 This fear stems from the use of words which warn Australian citizens of the ‘danger’ of off-shore arrivals.

“The media both reflects and leads the bourgeois political thinking of the day, and that thinking is firmly entrenched in racist refugee attitudes.

 Only a mass movement around refugees, climate change, jobs and wages is going to challenge that narrow framework through which the mouthpieces of capital view the world,” says Passant.

 Gibson states that papers often promote hysteria and scaremongering when reporting about refugees. He affirms that a large number of refugees come to Australia on planes yet we tend to associate them with the words ‘boat-people.’

   “We hear about boat people and so we assume that all refugees are boat people. This hysteria comes from our history and earlier reporting on asylum seekers,” Gibson states.

   Statistics show that every day 13 asylum seekers enter Australia through airports, however only 40 to 60 percent of these are granted protection visas. People who come to Australia by planes are allowed to live and work in the community, unlike ‘boat-people.’

  Thus, Rudd’s policies need to be reviewed.

  And as Passant writes “we do not accept that the Australian government has the right to decide the fate of people seeking refuge, especially from chaos that the government has a hand in creating or an interest in supporting.”    

 Afrin Ahmed

“He hit the American scene like a thunderclap, upended politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order,” writes Time magazine’s Editor in Chief, David Von Drehle. Drehle wasn’t the only one excited on 20^th January 2009, precisely at 11:30am when a man named Barack Obama took to the stage, a knight in shining armour.

His audience ooh-ed and ahh-ed as he stood strong, powerful and ready to take the world by storm.

Parades begun and galas were set in motion as amazing artists and entertainers glittered about. It was a day to remember, a day that has been inscribed in the pages of history, when a black man became the President of the United States, the very day scores of hearts around the world fluttered with joy.

Getting to this point of celebration for Obama and his presidential campaign was no easy feat. The Bush administration has left a bushy trail behind, one with many weeds and all sorts of creepy crawlies.

It is a mess that 53% of American citizens elected the Democrats to clean up, with starry-eyed expectations and endless hopes of seeing better days in America.

According to Amnesty International, President Barack Obama inherited a legacy of torture, impunity and unlawful detention.

The legacy is the result of the USA’s reaction to the attacks on 11 September 2001, a response that has been marked as an assault on the international human rights framework.

Human rights violations, including the international law crimes of torture and enforced disappearance, were not only committed but were justified by the US government as necessary and legal.

Obama made promises to address human rights violations to the United States. The democratic voters accepted these promises and gave them a chance.

Today, the whole world sits tight waiting for all the promises to be fulfilled.

Amnesty International gave President Obama 100 days to fulfil the promises made in his election campaign.

Now with zero days remaining, some have been achieved, others are in progress and a few have been set back. 

Obama pleased Amnesty International on his second day in office when he gave orders to close Guantanamo and when he put an end to the CIA programme of long-term secret detentions.

He also imposed new standards for interrogations on his third day in office.

Things seem to be hitting off until our knight in shining armour started to send out mixed messages to the public.

The following are a number of “mixed messages” noted by Amnesty International:

• Giving CIA permission to use interrogation techniques that include torture and other ill-treatment against detainees in secret CIA custody. Although, Obama has publicly condemned the practice of torture repeatedly.

• He did not commit to every detainee being either charged in a civilian court or released, leaving the future uncertain for 240 people. Although, he said that detainees would be reviewed on a “rolling basis and as promptly as possible”.

• Only one person has been released from Guantanomo since January.

• Obama has left open the possibility of the CIA abducting and detaining people in “short term, transitory” facilities. However he had earlier ordered the CIA to close its secret detention facilities and prohibited the agency from operating.

• Withholding information about approximately 500 men held in the US military base in Bagram from the public, even though he wanted to move away from the Bush administration’s secrecy policy.

• Apparently stopped using the phrases “war on terror” or “enemy combatant,” but continued to rely on the laws of war, rather than criminal justice and human rights, as the overarching framework for counter-terrorism measures.

It is impractical to expect the president to fulfil each and every pressing humanitarian concern that lurks today in his first 100 days in office.

But much confusion and frustration has been sparked as the Obama continues to send out mixed messages.

“The question we are asking is whether President Obama’s promise of change and the initial steps taken by his administration herald an ultimately substantial and enduring shift towards respect for human rights in the fight against terrorism,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International. 
 
 

 Mia Burns

For most of us, chocolate is nothing but a sweet delight. The perfect way to satisfy that sugary craving, or a delightful afternoon pick-me-up.

Yet behind every bite, there are hundreds of thousands of African children trafficked and enslaved.

The last thing on our mind as we bite into a block of chocolate is the work involved in getting it there. Yet the production of our beloved biscuits and bars is a nightmare for cocoa workers in West Africa.

As cocoa crop prices continue to plunge, the worst cases are seeing children as young as six are being forced to work 80-100 hours a week, succumbing to regular beatings and suffering malnutrition.

In 2007, the two biggest cocoa producers in the world, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, were found guilty by the United Nations and the US Congress of exporting cocoa made by trafficked and enslaved children.

Over two years have passed, and yet the issue remains. With 4.5 million cocoa farms worldwide, tens of thousands of people trading cocoa and thousands of chocolate makers around the world, it is a long and complex supply chain that directly touches millions of chocolate consumers.

So where does the problem begin? The answer is at the very roots of the production line, with farmers being paid less than it costs to buy a Mars Bar in Australia for a whole kilo of cocoa beans.

Instead of financially burdening themselves, they turn to slave labour, as they cannot afford to pay workers’ wages.

Fairtrade Business Development Officer, Daniel Mackey, says that a lot of the problem is rooted in history and the lack of transparency in the cocoa production line.

“A lot of the problem is left over from supply and chain practices of the past, and the race to the bottom as people try to cut process and obtain commodities as cheaply as they can. The cheapest labour they can get is slave labour, or child labour.”

He says that the main way to fix the problem is to acknowledge that these things are still happening.

“People aren’t aware that it still exists and the extent to which it still exists,” he says.

Even when people are aware of the problem, many believe that the children enter this work voluntarily, accepting low wages to provide for their starving and struggling families.

However thousands of African children are abducted to cater for the cocoa demand, taken from their families and homes against their will.

They are trafficked by criminal networks operating both nationally and internationally, and forced to work without pay.

Bill Guyton, spokesperson for the World Cocoa Foundation, says that the solution is about focusing on empowering local cocoa-growing communities through public-private partnerships.

“These kinds of programs take a holistic view of working with farm families to help them improve arming and marketing practices, thus raising incomes. At the same time, we include child labour awareness training with farmers and their families.” 

40-50 million people depend on cocoa for their livelihood, and 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa. Multinational chocolate corporations do not deny they purchase cocoa from farms using child labour.

But they also believe there is no quick fix solution, and that they must continue to resort to this process for the foreseeable future.

World Vision spokesperson Meg Sattler says: “no child should be forced to work in exploited labour. Children have the right to be children. Child labour in cocoa production needs to be eradicated and consumers have a big role to play in this by making ethical choices.”

“Major chocolate manufactures have known about the problem of child labour in cocoa production for at least ten years. These manufactures and exporters bear much responsibility in tackling the issue.”

The Fair Trade movement provides an alternative. It is an accord to pay farmers a fair price for their crops in agreed humane and sustainable conditions.

This movement empowers farmers, and gives them back autonomy as producers.  Based on dialogue, transparency and respect the not-for-profit Fair Trade chocolate gives rights to the cocoa farmers and their workers, while allowing people to enjoy their favourite confectionary.

Oxfam spokesperson, John Lindsay, says that it is possible to achieve fair-trade chocolate if the right steps are taken.

“We only purchase FLO labelled Fairtrade products that guarantee a better deal for third world producers. So it is this certification system that we rely on as well as fair trade organisations that we purchase from.”

As a consumer it is easy to disregard the problems of the wider world, it is easy to ask yourself- but what can I do? Yet there are several simple steps that can be taken to make a big difference.

For stores to stock ethical chocolate, a demand is required. So let your local department stores and supermarkets know that if it was available you’d buy ethical chocolate, and let them know how much you’d appreciate them using ethical chocolate in their home brands.

So next time you’re biting into that chocolate, consider the real price behind where it came from, and as a consumer make a choice. If the work behind that bar is fair and just, it is sure to taste a whole lot sweeter.

 Milly Brooks

A nation that prides itself on its promise of freedom and opportunity is currently falling short in its fundamental duty to recognise basic human rights.  

Under Australian law, a citizen can find their human rights scattered across domestic legislation, the Australian Constitution, case law and international law. Citizens who wish to redress and remedy human rights violations face a long ordeal in trying to source their rights, as any form of structure is non-existent. 

Enshrining a Bill of Rights in Australia would be the ultimate step to attaining flawless recognition of human rights within the nation. A move that is long overdue.

So, why the wait? For decades on end, as countries such as France and Europe enshrined their rights, Australia has sat on the sideline, waiting, excuse-filled, and motionless.  

According to Julian Burnside, QC: “A modern Bill of Rights sets the baseline of human rights standards on which society has agreed.” 

Indira Deversevic, 32, St Johns Park, said: “For most it would seem unnecessary because we live the lives that we do.

 But when thinking of vulnerable parties, like refugees and detainees, it seems almost ridiculous that there isn’t already one.” 

So why hasn’t the Australian Government already taken the plunge?

Louise Chappell, a student from Sydney University asks: “What is the likelihood of Australia ever achieving a Bill of Rights if one of the major parties is opposed and the other is ambivalent about its introduction?” 

As a democratic nation, Australia likes to believe that it recognises and protects human rights. But despite signing five international treaties that outline these rights, there is actually no formal recognition in Australian law.

To sign a treaty means next to nothing, as state sovereignty prohibits external interference. This means that only that national governments can do anything to address breaches.

Governments are encouraged to ratify human rights treaties into domestic law. But encouragement is not enough, as ratification means governments must overhaul sources of law to enact a document that only vaguely exists, which they often don’t do.  

48-year-old Louise Hewson of Hunters Hill says: “I don’t think it’s necessary to be making changes to the law when our rights exist. They may be hard to source, but they are there, and that’s what matters.” 

Australia is the only democratic nation in the world that does not have a Bill of Rights.  Lesley Rozsnyoi, 46, Cherrybrook, said: “I just don’t know why we don’t have one already. Is Australia trying to go against what the rest of the democratic world is doing?” 

For many years the United Kingdom stood alongside Australia as one of the few common law countries refusing to introduce a Bill of Rights. When Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK, the country, just like every other democratic nation in the world, saw sense and enacted a Bill.

Anna Freeland, 18, Boronia Park, said: “A Bill of Rights in necessary if Australia wants to uphold its reputation as a democratic nation.” 

Louise Chappell from the University of Sydney said: “Australia is still a long way from achieving a Bill of Rights. It will not become a reality until political leaders and the community accept the general principle of the need for a Bill of Rights.” 

Julian Burnside, QC, said: “I thought that we simply did not need one. I thought that no Australian government would pass laws that betrayed basic human rights values. I was wrong. The past few years have convinced me that Australia needs a Bill of Rights.” 

In a conference in 2002, the then Attorney General, Daryl Williams, said: “Australia has an excellent human rights record…there is no need for a Bill of Rights in Australia.”  

This is an interesting statement when considering the treatment of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib while in detention in Guantanamo Bay.  

According to an affidavit supporting a restraining order against the US Government, an Australian official allegedly witnessed the torture and humiliation of Habib by a US agent.

The Australian government did nothing to help him. Hicks was detained for five years and eventually made a plea bargain after realising that his right to a fair trial would be completely ignored. Once again, the Australian government did nothing to help him.  

Both these cases illustrate a government unwilling to aid their own citizens in situation of gross violation of human rights.

It is thought that with access to a document outlining the basic fundamental human rights, these men would have had a much better chance of remedying the breaches.   

Professor George Williams and Anthony Mason, Professor and Foundation Director of the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales, said:

“Australian law still routinely permits the mistreatment of people in ways that are unjust and infringe upon the dignity, respect and freedom to which all human beings are entitled. We should do better.  

An Australian charter of human rights would be a powerful new tool in the fight to protect the freedoms, not only of Australia citizens, but of all people who come to our shores.”  

Josh Chalkley, 19, an Arts/Law student at Sydney University, said: “If enacted within the Constitution, human rights cannot be ignored or overlooked. Australia should be instituting one immediately.”  

Opposition still undoubtedly exists, with 63-year-old George Grunfeld of Drummoyne saying: “It’s a waste of time and effort and it will never work.” 

Ultimately, the word of the people ironically means nothing without government support. Organisations like Amnesty International engage in endless efforts, all with limited success.

The problem remains that while a governing body is unwilling, changes cannot be made.

Despite the efforts of humanitarian organisations, as long as resistance to the idea exists in government, little hope remains in the struggle to have human rights adequately recognised. It’s an unfortunate reality.