Australia’s Cruel Detention of Migrant Children Must Stop Closed

The Australia´s Government continues to detain children in several facilities like Darwin, Nauru or Christmas Island, where there are more than 250 children suffering in detention. All these children are locked up for long periods of time, sometimes even sharing facilities with unrelated grownups. They have an inadequate health and mental care services, among other deficiencies, and an irregular education.

The UN Secretary-General confirmed in 2013, “Detention of migrant children constitutes a violation of child rights.”

UNICEF Australia said compulsory and indeterminate confinement of children exposed them to sexual violence and abuse, as well as causing significant physical illness and serious permanent impacts, like nervousness, depression, developmental delays, memory loss, PTS disorder, and other mental problems that could end in self-harm and suicide.

The United Nations General Assembly has called on states not to hold up migrant children exclusively because they or their parents have broken immigration regulations. Australia is possibly the only Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development country to impose compulsory, indeterminate imprisonment on children.

Professor Gilliam Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission wrote “The Forgotten Children Report”. This report said that the detention was damaging children´s mental and physical health, sometimes chronically despite the best efforts of immigration department. “It is the fact of detention, particularly the deprivation of liberty and the high numbers of mentally unwell adults, that is causing emotional and developmental disorders amongst children,” the report said. “Children are exposed to danger by their close confinement with adults who suffer high levels of mental illness. Thirty per cent of adults detained with children have moderate to severe mental illnesses.”

“The report confirms so many of our worst fears about the impact of detention on children. Disproportionately high rates of severe mental illness, high rates of self-harm, young children denied access to medical treatment such as hearing aids and glasses for prolonged periods. This is nothing short of state-sanctioned abuse.”

“The findings of the Australian Human Rights Commission report are expected to confirm what is already known globally: detention is a dangerous place for children and can cause life-long harm,” UNICEF’s Amy Lamoin said.

Claire Hammerton, campaign coordinator of ChilOut, a not-for-profit community group seeking to increase public consciousness about the dilemma of migrant children detention centers, said the report confirmed a “dramatic failure” by successive governments to guard children in their care.

Some children in detention over recent years have turned 18 and are no longer counted among child detention statistics, but are still detained.

It is time to end the incarceration of children exclusively for their immigration status and implement serious, safe, and acceptable alternatives to imprisonment. That’s why we need your signature in order to put pressure to the Australia´s Government so they can put an end to the children detentions.

For more information:

ChillOut

End Children Detention

End Inmigration Detention of Children

Australian Human Rights Comission

Sources:

The Guardian

Human Rights Watch