A session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva, Switzerland, February 26, 2024.
(Sydney) – Australia has refused to commit to reforms for the incarceration of children, offshore detention of asylum seekers, and phasing out fossil fuels, despite repeated calls to do so from United Nations member countries, Human Rights Watch said today.
In its written response to its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council, the Albanese Labor government accepted just 128 of the 332 recommendations it received (38 percent). This is a lower acceptance rate than at the 2021 UPR, when the former Coalition government accepted 51 percent of the recommendations.
“Australia claims it takes its human rights obligations seriously, yet ignored the majority of the recommendations resulting from the UN review process,” said Annabel Hennessy, Australia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “For years, other countries have called on Australia to stop incarcerating children as young as 10, end the offshore detention of asylum seekers, and take real action on climate change, yet Australia still refuses to act.”
The UPR is a United Nations Human Rights Council process in which the human rights records of member states are reviewed by other states every five years.
In its response to recommendations received during the UPR, Australia said it recognized that it “must do more to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the criminal justice system” and was “committed to improving youth justice outcomes.”
However, these claims were undermined by Australia’s refusal to accept recommendations from 27 countries to raise the age of criminal responsibility. States have called on Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility every UPR review cycle.
Currently, children as young as 10 can be held criminally respon
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