26 September 2023

Call for UN rights in Indigenous future

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The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is calling for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to be incorporated into law to kickstart progress towards reconciliation.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner with the AHRC, June Oscar said that following the work of a group of Indigenous peoples from around the globe, UNDRIP was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2007.

“Under the declaration, our rights to education, health, housing and other basic needs essential to a life well lived are understood as inextricable from our rights to self-determination, participation in decision-making, respect for and protection of culture, and equality and non-discrimination,” Ms Oscar said.

“Only four nations voted against the resolution – Australia, Canada, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the United States,” she said.

“While in the three years that followed all four states ultimately agreed to ‘support’ the declaration, over the past decade this support has been largely cosmetic.”

Ms Oscar said UNDRIP affirmed First Nations people’s rights to make their own decisions, to control their own organisations, to put in place governance bodies grounded in their culture and to restore their societal and cultural structures, practices and knowledge systems to emancipate themselves from the inequalities they faced.

The Commissioner said she was pleased to see with the new Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap coming into force, the Declaration was covered in detail in some State Closing the Gap Implementation Plans.

“While all four countries who voted against the declaration in 2007 have been more or less inert with respect to implementation over the past decade, this is now changing rapidly,” she said.

“We are in a moment of global reckoning on multiple fronts, all underscored by the failure of current systems to address entrenched inequalities.

“Australia risks falling behind if it does not address them.”

Ms Oscar said incorporating UNDRIP into the laws, policies and institutions of Australia would demonstrate a strong commitment from Federal, State and Territory Governments to working in genuine partnership with First Nations people to respond to their needs and aspirations.

Further information on UNDRIP can be accessed on the AHRC’s website at this PS News link.

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