Submission by Human Rights Watch to Australian Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department on its draft National Report for Australia’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review

Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Australian Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department on its draft National Report for Australia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Human Rights Watch made a civil society submission to the United Nations (UN) on Australia’s human rights record for its upcoming UPR in July 2025.[1]

Voluntary commitments Australia could make during its UN UPR appearance

The Attorney-General’s Department has asked for feedback about potential voluntary commitments Australia could make during its upcoming UN UPR appearance.

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Australian government make the following commitments:

1. Commit to legislating a national Human Rights Act that implements all of Australia's obligations under international human rights law into domestic law.

   Reasons for recommendation: Australia does not have a national human rights act or charter. In May 2024, a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s human rights framework found that while there is some protection against human rights violations in existing laws, there is an inadequate “piecemeal approach.” The inquiry recommended enacting a national Human Rights Act.[2]

2. Commit to closing offshore processing centers and immediately evacuate refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants remaining in Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Australia. Process all asylum seeker claims in a thorough, impartial, and transparent manner in Australia. Commit to ending Australia’s blanket refusal to resettle refugees registered in Indonesia.

   Reasons for recommendation: In January 2025, the UN Human Rights Committee found that Australia remained responsible for the arbitrary detention of asylum seekers redirected or transferred to offshore detention facilities in Nauru. The Committee found that Australia had violated its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including article 9(1), which guarantees the right to be free from arbitrary detention.[3] Australia introduced a blanket rejection in 2014 on resettling refugees who have registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Indonesia.[4] Prior to 2014, Australia was the biggest resettlement country for refugees registered in Indonesia. Indonesia is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, and refugees living there do not have work authorization.[5]

3. Commit to raising the age of criminal responsibility to a minimum age of at least 14 years or older.

   Reasons for recommendation: During the 2021 UPR, Australia did not support the 31 recommendations calling to raise the age of criminal responsibility.[6] In most jurisdictions in the country, including federally, the age of criminal responsibility remains at 10 years,[7] well below the international standard of at least 14 years old.[8] During the 2021 UPR, Australia stated that it was working to improve the protection of children within youth detention facilities.[9] However, since 2021, violations against children in detention have worsened. In 2024, Australia’s national children’s commissioner released a report that said children were subject to the most egregious breaches of human rights in the country and called for national reform.[10]

4. To help end the overrepresentation of First Nations children in out-of-home care, commit to legislating guaranteed legal representation for parents experiencing child removal to ensure the best interests of the child are a primary consideration.

   Reasons for recommendation: In its 2021 national UPR report, Australia said it was committed to “eliminating” the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. [11]Since then, rather than being eliminated, the overrepresentation of First Nations children in out-of-home care has worsened.[12] In 2023, First Nations children were over 12 times more likely to be in care than non-Indigenous children, compared to 10 times in 2021.[13] Human Rights Watch research has found parents often lack legal representation in care and protection proceedings, in which courts decide on issuing protection orders and placing children in out-of-home care.[14]

5. Commit to introducing laws and policies that ensure prisoners with disabilities are never held in solitary confinement.

   Reasons for recommendation: Human Rights Watch has found that prisoners with disabilities in Australia regularly experience sexual, physical, and verbal violence from fellow prisoners or staff, and are disproportionately held in solitary confinement.[15]

6. Commit to introducing legislation to prohibit the use of chemical restraints in aged care facilities as a means of controlling the behavior of older people with dementia or for the convenience of staff. Any new law should ensure informed consent for all treatment or interventions, independent monitoring, and effective, accessible, independent complaint and enforcement mechanisms to protect older people’s rights.

   Reasons for recommendation: In 2022, Human Rights Watch documented how chemical restraints had been used in more than 150 aged care facilities according to compliance reports from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, despite regulations introduced in 2019 aimed to reduce their use.[16] The new Aged Care Act that comes into force November 2025 also permits the continued use.[17] This continued use of chemical restraints is a violation of the human rights to health, bodily integrity, and equality, and could constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law. [18]

7. Commit to not approving new oil, gas, or coal projects, and adopt a policy framework to phase out fossil fuels while ramping up renewable energy production.

   Reasons for recommendation: During the 2021 UPR, Australia supported a recommendation to take immediate measures to fight against the effects of climate change on human rights.[19]Despite presenting itself as a minor emitter, Australia is the world’s fifth largest polluter when carbon emissions from fossil fuel exports are included in calculations – and is moving ahead with major plans to further expand production for exports.[20] Ending new coal, oil, and gas projects is the clear, urgent advice from scientific[21] and energy[22] experts if the world is to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

Feedback on Australia’s draft National Report

The Attorney-General’s Department has asked for feedback on Australia’s draft National Report. Human Rights Watch provides the following feedback, organized by topic heading:

Overrepresentation of First Nations peoples in prisons

In the draft report, it states: “All Australian governments are working closely through Closing the Gap and the Justice Policy Partnership to address the underlying causes of the overrepresentation of First Nations people in the criminal justice system and reduce First Nations incarceration rates.”[23]

Human Rights Watch disagrees that all Australian governments are working closely to reduce First Nation incarceration rates, particularly given the introduction of more punitive laws and policies in relation to children who offend, which disproportionately impacts First Nations children. This includes the Northern Territory government lowering its minimum age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 1o years[24] and Queensland’s introduction of the so-called “adult crime, adult time” laws that compel courts to give children convicted of certain crimes longer prison sentences, including life sentences for some offenses.[25] On an average day, 700 children aged 10 to 17 are detained or imprisoned across Australia.[26] First Nations children make up approximately 60 percent of those detained, despite being only about 6 percent of the child population.[27] Australia’s criminalization of children puts them on a trajectory to further incarceration as adults.[28]

Raising the age of criminal responsibility in all jurisdictions is crucial to working to end the overrepresentation of First Nations incarceration rates. However, when Human Rights Watch wrote to all major political parties prior to the recent election, the Australian Labor Party responded that reform of the age of criminal responsibility is “overwhelmingly” a matter for the states and territories.[29]

The draft National Report also asserts that “since Australia’s third UPR, Australian jurisdictions have been investing in new fit-for-purpose prisons, rehabilitation and reintegration programs to reduce recidivism, diversionary programs and non-custodial measures to reduce prison populations, and programs to reduce the over-representation of First Nations people in prisons.”[30]

Human Rights Watch disagrees with this characterization of Australia’s prison system. Evidence shows that many Australian prisons are not-fit-for-purpose. For example, in 2023, the Western Australian Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services (OICS) released a report denouncing Broome prison as “dilapidated” and “poorly maintained” to the point of being a health and safety hazard with foul-smelling, open drains, persistent mold, water damage, and garden crates used as furniture.[31] The report found an underlying, unacceptably racist element to the conditions. It said, “[w]ith 80 per cent of the [prison] population Aboriginal, the sub-standard services and conditions would not have been acceptable in a metropolitan prison where Aboriginal people were in the minority.”[32]

Children are also being incarcerated in facilities designed for adults in multiple jurisdictions. This includes Unit 18 in Western Australia, a cellblock of maximum-security adult prison Casuarina. In Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmania, children are held in watchhouses (buildings usually attached to police stations designed to hold adult prisons on a short-term basis). Tasmania’s custodial inspector in 2025 found "children being held in the state's adult prisons were exposed to threats of sexual abuse, violent behavior, and inhumane and degrading treatment."[33] In 2024, the Queensland Inspector of Detention Services documented that children have been held in watchhouses for weeks without fresh air, outdoor exercise, and natural light.[34]

People with disabilities

The draft report states: “The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Disability Royal Commission), was released in September 2023 and made 222 recommendations.”[35] Human Rights Watch suggests the report include that the federal government has only committed to fully accepting 13 of the 172 recommendations directed to it.[36]

Older persons

The draft report states: “The new Aged Care Act 2024 (Cth) places older people at the centre of the aged care system. The new Act establishes a new supporter framework, which reinforces older peoples’ right to make decisions that affect their lives and supports their right to autonomy and self-determination.”[37] Human Rights Watch is concerned the new act fails to ban chemical restraint in aged care facilities and only seeks to minimize its use. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has criticized the use of chemical restraints in Australian aged care facilities in relation to Australia’s obligations to prohibit torture and ill treatment, and recommended that Australia take “immediate steps to end restrictive practices.”[38]

Mandatory sentencing

The draft report states: “In February 2025, the Australian Parliament passed laws to strengthen Criminal Code hate speech offences for advocating force or violence against groups or members of groups and creating new offences for advocating force or violence against associates and property of members of groups and for threatening force or violence against groups or members of groups or their associates or property.”[39] Human Rights Watch suggests the report note that these laws included mandatory minimum sentencing, which was criticized by human rights and legal experts.[40]

Footnotes