Aboriginal Rights, CERD Findings
Australia Still Ignores UN's Committee For The Elimination Of Racism
Has there been any improvement in Australian Aboriginal rights since the UN condemned Australia's racism and descrimination record nearly ten years ago?
CERD's (UN Committee for Elimination of Racism and Descrimination) declaration of August 1997 identified Australia as being out of step with United Nations standards on Aboriginal rights. It demanded that the Australian government address Aboriginal rights issues immediately with regard to:
- recognising and respecting indigenous distinct culture, history, language and way of life as an enrichment of the State's cultural identity and to promote its preservation;
- ensuring that members of indigenous peoples are free and equal in dignity and rights and free from any discrimination, in particular that based on indigenous origin or identity;
- providing indigenous peoples with conditions allowing for a sustainable economic and social development compatible with their cultural characteristics;
- ensuring that members of indigenous peoples have equal rights in respect of effective participation in public life and that no decisions directly relating to their rights and interests are taken without their informed consent;
- ensuring that indigenous communities can exercise their rights to practise and revitalise their cultural traditions and customs and to preserve and to practise their language.
- recognising and protecting the rights of indigenous peoples to own, develop, control and use their communal lands, territories and resources and, where they have been deprived of their lands and territories traditionally owned or otherwise inhabited or used without their free and informed consent, to take steps to return those lands and territories. Only when this is for factual reasons not possible the right to restitution should be substituted by the right to just fair and prompt compensation. Such compensation should take the form of lands and territories.
Well, that was nearly a decade ago. To Australia's shame, the status of Aboriginal rights has not just remained unaddressed, but has actually gone backwards. History will judge this colonial government harshly.
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