Recent experiences in Australia understandably lead many people to suggest that areas such as detention without trial, migration & asylum seeking provide key examples of why a stronger legal framework to protect human rights is needed.
I agree that focusing on these areas provide many examples of how Australia’s legislative framework is seriously inadequate in protecting some of the basic rights that should underpin any democracy worthy of the name.
However, it is always worthwhile reminding ourselves that no legislative framework is sufficient to deliver fundamental rights and protect the foundations of the rule of law when the geberal citizenry supports or accepts government actions that degrade these basic principles.
While I believe it is legitimate to criticise the actions of Australian governments in regards to these principles, we should also be aware that governments in other democratic nations have also fallen well short of these standards.
Following are some recent examples from other western countries which indicate that having a human rights framework entrenched in law doesn’t necessarily deliver results much better than Australia has managed in the last decade or so.
In Greece – Iraqi Asylum Seekers Denied Protection:
Greece systematically rounds up and detains Iraqi asylum seekers and other migrants in dirty, overcrowded conditions and forcibly and secretly expels them to Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
And Greek government failing to protect migrant children:
Some 1,000 unaccompanied migrant children who have entered Greece in 2008 without parents or caregivers struggle to survive without any state assistance
And from the USA, which in theory has Constitutional as well as legislative protection again basic violation of human rights, comes reminders about indefinite detention and breaches of basic legal rights:
City of Immigrants Fills Jail Cells With Its Own
In Central Falls, Rhode Island, a mostly Latino city, few realized that a jail held hundreds of people caught in the nation’s immigration crackdown.
hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime
and also on the issue of indefinitely jailing people without charge – a key early test test for President Obama:
Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.
“The agenda for the Obama administration in dealing with the Bush administration’s assault on the rule of law,” said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University … “should be to plow the site with both intellectual and political salt.”
And finally, a reminder that migrant rights are not just an issue for wealthy countries:
Governments in the Middle East should act quickly in 2009 to fulfill longstanding promises to protect migrant women’s rights, said Human Rights Watch today, ahead of International Migrants’ Day. A number of governments have promised major reforms in the response to widespread and egregious abuse, but have yet to finalize and carry out these plans.
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