Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Kids Nauru
Children stage a protest inside the Nauru immigration detention centre in 2016.
Children stage a protest inside the Nauru immigration detention centre in 2016.

Calls to adopt child abuse inquiry's recommendations on immigration detention

This article is more than 6 years old

Government urged to implement child safety standards after royal commission makes several recommendations relating to immigration department

The federal government must immediately heed recommendations by the royal commission to protect children currently in its immigration detention system, human rights lawyers have said.

On Friday the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse delivered its final report, primarily focused on religious institutions and state-based care homes – many of which have long closed.

But it also made several recommendations relating to the still-operating immigration detention centres, including that they comply with child safety standards and allow independent visitors.

It called for state and territory legislative changes to ensure mandatory compliance with child safe standards included justice and detention services for children, including immigration detention facilities.

The royal commission also said the Department of Immigration should:

  • Establish a mechanism to regularly audit the implementation of the child safety standards
  • Designate appropriately qualified child safety officers for each place in which children are detained
  • Implement an independent visitors program in immigration detention
  • Require all institutions in its jurisdiction that engage in child-related work to meet the child safety standards
  • Contractually require its service providers to comply with the child safety standards identified by the royal commission, as applied to immigration detention

The royal commission investigated Australia’s immigration detention centres, but faced pressure to expand it to the offshore network, particularly in the wake of the Guardian’s Nauru Files publication. It held a limited public hearing in March.

Human rights groups had argued the Australian government’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse inside offshore detention centres was within the terms of reference. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, argued it was a matter for Nauru.

The commission’s research identified immigration detention as “a specific institutional context with an elevated risk of child sexual abuse”.

It was difficult to determine the institutional response to the abuse because of “significant barriers” to identifying and reporting allegations, and limited information. The commission also noted many centres were staffed by third-party contractors and the levels of standards and monitoring were “unclear”.

The National Justice Project, a pro bono human rights law firm, said the department knew victims of abuse and assault inside immigration detention needed support but failed to provide appropriate therapeutic and other specialist services.

It called on the government to immediately implement child safety standards and require its guards in Australia and Nauru to comply with the national standards.

“It is scandalous that the minister for immigration continues to expose men, women, children to abuse and ongoing sexual assault, abuse and mental harm,” said the project’s principal solicitor, George Newhouse.

“That children are denied therapeutic care and that there is no independent monitoring or oversight of immigration detainees is a national disgrace.”

“This government remains responsible for the harm that is being done to children in detention in Australia and offshore in Nauru, and the National Justice Project is working hard to get them appropriate care and to hold the government accountable for these atrocities.”

The sexual abuse of a nine-year-old boy inside an onshore detention centre in 2015 was among cases examined by the royal commission. The boy was being held in the centre with his younger brother and father.

In response to the abuse – of which there is no allegation against the father or detention centre staff – the family was moved to another state, but the two boys were placed in a group care home while the father remained in detention.

This year, the younger son disclosed that he was also sexually abused – then aged seven – at the same time as his brother.

Alison Battisson, director principal of another pro bono law firm, Human Rights for All, said the separation of the children from their father and his continued detention were a clear breach of the family’s human rights. The mental health of the boys continued to deteriorate, she said.

“The royal commission final report highlights many recent and historical issues. The lack, however, of an appropriate institutional response by the DIBP [Department of Immigration and Border Protection] and Dutton for this family is happening now and ongoing,” said Battison.

“The father needs to be released now. Separating a family where both children have been sexually abused is unacceptable. One of the main reasons for having a commission is to change institutional responses. So let’s start that change now.”

The UNHCR has previously recognised the family as refugees, but the Australian government has not yet made a final determination despite being told by its assessment authority the family would face persecution if they were returned. The family arrived in Australia five years ago.

About 140 refugee and asylum seeker children are currently held on Nauru. Fewer than five are in detention centres or alternative places of detention in Australia, while 180 are in the “community under residence determination”, having been brought from offshore detention to Australia.

On Friday Australia ratified the optional protocol to the convention against torture (Opcat), which will oblige it to create an independent watchdog to monitor all places of detention, including immigration detention.

However, Newhouse said “in theory” the Opcat obligation would address the recommendation for independent visitors to detention centres, but he had little faith the government intended to implement it within the immigration portfolio.

“We have virtually no transparency in the immigration detention system and the independent visitor would be a fantastic initiative,” he told Guardian Australia.

“But I’m not convinced the minister wants any oversight whatsoever of what’s going on in immigration detention.”

The minister for immigration has been contacted for comment.

Most viewed

Most viewed