Sri Lankan children in immigration detention in Australia:
Human rights and state responsibility
Anjani
Leelarathna1#
Intern at Central
Environmental Authority, Sri Lanka
Abstract - There are many families in
immigration detention in Australia. People who are fleeing Sri Lanka devastated
by the ethnic conflict between Tamil Tigers & Sri Lankan government have
the same basic needs as decent living standards, social equality, health care
and medicine.
According to the current
legislation in Australia, asylum seekers who arrive by boat, must be taken “as
soon as reasonably practicable” to a Regional Processing Country unless the
Minister determines otherwise. Sri Lanka has been co-operating with Australia
to return these migrants. Children who are in this situation are very
vulnerable and need special protection. There are existing international Human
Rights and Child Rights standards and mechanisms, but their implementation is
unsatisfactory. It is clear that Australia’s system of mandatory immigration
detention of children is fundamentally inconsistent with Australia’s human rights
obligations such as ICCPR, ICESCR, CRC and Torture Convention.
The children in detention on Christmas Island live in converted shipping containers the
majority of which are 3 x 2.5 meters. Children are effectively confined to
these rooms for many hours of the day as they are the only private spaces that
provide respite from the heat. The lack of school education on Christmas Island
for teenagers has had negative impacts on their learning and may have long term
impacts on the cognitive development of these children. And also the level of
mental distress of children in detention is evident by very high rates of
self-harm.
The main intention of this paper is to
find out the duty owed by Australia and Sri Lanka to
these children under International Law. This paper also discusses whether the
current standards and mechanisms are sufficient to deal with the current
problems and suggest how it could be further developed.
Keywords: Children’s Rights, Asylum seekers,
State Responsibility
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