Briefing Note to Australia’s Special Envoy for International Human Rights

Human Rights Watch is pleased to provide this briefing note to Australia’s Special Envoy for International Human Rights, Mark Dreyfus KC.

Human Rights Watch is an independent, international nongovernmental organization that reports on and advocates for human rights in about 100 countries worldwide. Human Rights Watch has had a Sydney office since 2013.

This briefing note will address the five key areas within the Special Envoy’s portfolio:

Abolition of the death penalty;
Rights and protections of children;
Rights and protections of people living with a disability;
Rights and protections of older persons;
Rights and protections of LGBTIQ+ individuals.

Death Penalty

Human Rights Watch has long opposed the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty and irreversibility. The United Nations General Assembly’s December 2022 resolution, which has been adopted biannually since 2007 (and in 2022 was led by Australia and Costa Rica), calls for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty. It states “that there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value” and acknowledged “that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty’s implementation is irreversible and irreparable.” About 170 countries, including Australia, have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice. We acknowledge the Australian government’s commitment to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

In its August 2024 submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Inquiry into Australia’s Advocacy for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, Human Rights Watch recommended that the Australian government:

Continue to engage in multilateral forums to work with other countries from different regions towards the global abolition of the death penalty, including at the UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights Council, and through the Universal Periodic Review.
Speak out publicly against the use of the death penalty during bilateral engagements with countries that retain the death penalty, setting measurable benchmarks for progress and abolition.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials and government representatives should prioritize death penalty advocacy in countries in which there are concerns about due process and fair trials, especially in countries that use torture to extract confessions.
Instruct embassies to regularly and consistently speak out on death penalty cases, and ensure visiting leaders and politicians meet with death penalty opponents and families of those sentenced to death, and take steps to support them when governments try to silence their voices.
DFAT should draft an annual public report naming the countries retaining the death penalty and providing regular updates on usage, cases, and steps towards a moratorium or reducing executions.
Update the 2018 strategy for abolition of the death penalty to include government-to-government assistance and police cooperation in a death penalty context. At the very least, any Australian police and government oversight board should include a government human rights specialist. There should be no police cooperation in cases where there is a risk that someone may face the death penalty.
Continue to enhance local efforts in other countries to end or reduce the death penalty by supporting civil society initiatives, lawyers’ groups, and others working to end the death penalty.

Country specific concerns:

Singapore
Singapore’s criminal justice system provides for the death penalty for a range of offenses, including trafficking, importing, or exporting quantities of drugs above a certain threshold. Drug offenses account for most executions in Singapore. There has been a steady increase in executions for drug-related offenses in the past few years in Singapore. This year, the authorities have already executed 15 people for drug-related offenses, the same number as for all of 2025.

International bodies, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have criticized Singapore’s use of the death penalty for drug-related crimes, noting that offenses not involving intentional killing do not meet the international law threshold of the “most serious crimes” for which capital punishment may be imposed.

The Singaporean government uses its overly broad and draconian laws to crack down on civic freedoms and silence criticism of the government, particularly on its use of corporal punishment. These laws include: the Public Order Act, which requires a police permit for any “cause-related” assembly—even for an individual acting alone—if it is held in a public place, while also giving the police commissioner authority to reject applications for an assembly “directed towards a political end” if any foreigner is involved. The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) gives the government broad discretionary powers to censor online content, such as requiring recipients of corrections notices to post government-determined “corrections.” International media outlets, Bloomberg and East Asia Forum, as well as local outlets, including The Online Citizen and The Edge Singapore, have received POFMA corrections notices in recent years for their reporting.

In June 2024, Singapore enacted the Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases Act (PACC), which further curtails fair trial and due process rights of prisoners in capital cases. The PACC severely limits prisoners’ ability to appeal their convictions and contravenes the 1984 UN Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty.

The Australian government should:

Speak out publicly against the use of the death penalty during all bilateral engagements, setting measurable benchmarks for progress.
Press the Singaporean government to abolish the death penalty for drug-related offenses by removing drug trafficking from the list of capital offenses, as a first step towards full abolition.
Australia should press the Singaporean government to end the practice of harassing and intimidating human rights defenders and anti-death penalty advocates for their activism and drop all politically motivated charges against those peacefully exercising their rights.
Australia should raise concerns about the PACC, which contravenes the 1984 UN Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty.

Iran
Iran carries out the most executions of any country except for China. Authorities systematically impose the death penalty after grossly unfair trials for acts not amounting to the “most serious crimes” such as drug-related offenses and for vaguely worded national security “crimes.” Courts systematically rely on “confessions” extracted under torture. Scores of people remain on death row for crimes committed as children.

By the end of 2025, authorities had carried out over 2,000 executions, according to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran and Amnesty International. This is the highest number of known executions since the late 1980s, with a marked increase in the number of executions following the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. Over half were for drug-related offenses. The death penalty once again disproportionately targeted members of marginalized communities and minorities, in particular Ahwazi Arab, Kurdish, Baluchi, and Afghan people.

Following the start of the armed conflict with the United States and Israel in February 2026, Iran’s authorities accelerated and expanded their use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression. Within a span of three months—from March 18, 2026, to June 18, 2026—the government executed following grossly unfair trials at least 44 men on politically motivated charges, including in connection with recent anti-government protests and on allegations of “espionage” and “collaboration with “hostile states.” At least two men were arrested and charged with capital offenses after returning from abroad. Scores of protesters and dissidents remain at risk of arbitrary, summary, and secret executions.

The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran has found that judges issuing death sentences relied on torture-tainted evidence and presided over trials marred by serious fair trial violations in cases amounting to the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, persecution, and other inhumane acts.

The Australian government should:

Ensure Australia does not engage in forcible and involuntary returns of people from Iran where they may face the risk of arbitrary detention, torture, grossly unfair trials, and the death penalty.
Commit to fully supporting criminal investigations in Australia on the basis of the principle of universal jurisdiction against Iranian officials allegedly responsible for crimes under international law, including crimes against humanity, as found by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, torture, and enforced disappearances committed in the context of their use of the death penalty, and, where sufficient evidence exists, their prosecution in accordance with national laws.
Form alliances with like-minded states on the issue of the death penalty with a view to take concrete actions in particular by working with countries that have embassies in Iran; request—in a sustained manner—to send high-level observers to capital trial proceedings, in particular of individuals arrested in connection with recent protests; and request information on the cases of individuals facing capital charges and those currently under death sentences.

Iraq
Iraq relies extensively on the use of the death penalty, particularly in alleged counterterrorism cases. In June 2024, a group of United Nations human rights experts said that Iraq’s systematic executions based on torture-tainted confessions and an ambiguous counterterrorism law amount to arbitrary deprivation of life under international law and may amount to a crime against humanity.

On February 10, 2026, Iraq executed six people, its first mass execution since implementation of the death penalty was paused following passage of a General Amnesty Law in January 2025. There are an estimated 8,000 prisoners on death row.

An estimated 13 Australians suspected of links to the Islamic State (ISIS) have been transferred by the United States from Syria to an overcrowded prison in Iraq, where they may face vague and overbroad terrorism-related charges carrying the death penalty. Most if not all of these individuals had already been detained for seven years with no due process in Syria. One has been detained since childhood. Terrorism-related prosecutions in Iraq have repeatedly been associated with due process shortcomings and transferred detainees could face trials that do not meet international fair trial standards.

The Australian government should:

Promptly repatriate Australian nationals rather than leave them in Iraqi custody and in the meantime take urgent steps to ensure their humane treatment. These nationals should be prosecuted in fair proceedings in Australia if there is evidence that they may have committed crimes or be provided appropriate reintegration support.

Israel
On March 30, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a discriminatory bill expanding use of the death penalty. The wording of the bill makes it clear that it would primarily, if not exclusively, be applied to Palestinians.

The law establishes separate frameworks under Israeli criminal law and military law. Within the military court system applicable in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians convicted of killings classified as acts of terrorism, as defined under Israeli law, are subject to the death penalty, with only limited judicial discretion to impose life imprisonment in exceptional circumstances. Within the civil court system in Israel, the death penalty may be imposed for the deliberate killing of a person with the intention of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.” Critics contend that the law relies on overbroad definitions of terrorism and raises concerns regarding compatibility with international human rights standards.

The law modifies procedural safeguards in both civilian and military proceedings. It removes previous requirements for a prosecutorial request before a death sentence can be imposed and, in military courts, allows a death sentence to be imposed without an unanimous judicial decision. The legislation also restricts opportunities for pardon, commutation, or release. Human rights organizations and legal experts have criticized these provisions as inconsistent with fair trial guarantees and international standards governing capital punishment.

The Australian government should:

Publicly and privately urge the Israeli government to seek the immediate repeal of the 2026 death penalty legislation and fully abolish the death penalty.

Children’s Rights

Education Treaty
All children deserve the right to a free, quality, and inclusive education, from preschool through secondary school. Free education is a lifelong investment in a child’s health, employment, and community. Education is also a shield against child marriage, child labor, recruitment as child soldiers, and other dangers children face worldwide.

But the reality is that the number of children out of school continues to rise. Although around 90 percent of the world’s children of primary school age are enrolled, only about 60 percent of children attend at least one year of pre-primary education (the year known variously as kindergarten, transition, prep, reception, or pre-primary, depending on the state or territory in Australia), while the timely global completion rate for upper-secondary education is approximately 61 percent.

Globally, the cost of education to families continues to be one of the most widespread and common barriers to children’s entering or staying in school. This leads to a world in which education becomes a privilege rather than a right, leaving millions without the opportunities and protections education provides.

International human rights law requires all children to have access to free primary education, yet it says nothing about pre-primary education during especially formative years of development, and does not require governments to make secondary education, when children learn crucial skills to prepare them for their careers and future lives, free with the same urgency as primary education.

An initiative at the UN Human Rights Council is trying to change that. In 2024, the Human Rights Council—under the leadership of Sierra Leone, the Dominican Republic, and Luxembourg—initiated a process to consider and draft a new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child with the aim to: “(a) Explicitly recognize that the right to education includes early childhood care and education; (b) Explicitly state that, with a view to achieving the right to education, States shall (i) Make public pre-primary education available free to all, beginning with at least one year; (ii) Make public secondary education available free to all.”

To date, 61 countries have publicly expressed their support for this process. The next meeting to continue negotiations on the proposed optional protocol will be held in Geneva on August 31-September 2.

The Australian government should:

Constructively engage in the negotiations around the proposed new optional protocol to strengthen the right to education.
Publicly announce Australia’s support for the process during the upcoming meeting in Geneva.

Disability Rights

Worldwide, more than 1 billion people have a disability. In many countries, people with disabilities face countless abuses: they are denied the chance to go to school, languish for years in institutions, are subjected to horrific violence, or chained in their own homes—simply because they have a disability. This is often because of entrenched stigma, archaic laws, poverty, inadequate social protection systems, and the lack of community-based support services that enable people with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in society. These barriers continue to deny millions of people the opportunity to exercise their rights on an equal basis with others, as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Disability-Inclusive Care and Support Policies
The broader international care agenda has increasingly focused on advancing gender equality and addressing the exclusion of women with caregiving responsibilities from employment, education, and economic development. These are essential objectives. However, comparatively little attention has been given to ensuring that care and support systems also uphold the rights of people with disabilities under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Care policies need to adopt a genuinely intersectional approach—one that advances gender equality while also ensuring that people with disabilities, including women with disabilities, are recognized as rights holders and have access to the supports necessary to exercise autonomy, legal capacity, and the right to live independently in the community.

The Australian government should:

Actively engage in the preparations for the 2028 session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW72) to promote a disability-inclusive, human rights-based approach to care and support systems, consistent with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Armed Conflict and Disability-Based Persecution
People with disabilities are disproportionally impacted by armed conflict. For example, people with disabilities in Gaza have faced a higher risk of death and injury during the hostilities since October 7, 2023. Many have been unable to evacuate safely and have encountered significant barriers to accessing medical care, assistive devices, food, water, and other essential services, placing them at heightened risk throughout the conflict.

In Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces have targeted and killed people because of their disabilities. We have documented several cases of people, including children, who were killed because they were seen as “weak.” In one case, a witness described seeing the Rapid Support Forces kill a child with Down syndrome, a blind girl, and a woman with a physical disability who was unable to walk. This was the first time in more than a decade of documenting abuses in armed conflicts that Human Rights Watch had recorded targeted killings and abuses on this scale explicitly because of people’s disabilities.

States are currently negotiating a new Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, which aims to establish binding obligations to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and punish crimes against humanity, filling a longstanding gap in international law. The treaty should explicitly recognize disability as a prohibited ground for the crime of persecution. Such a provision would acknowledge the long history of systematic abuses against people with disabilities—including killings, forced institutionalization, sterilization, and other serious violations—while strengthening accountability and ensuring that disability-based persecution is fully investigated and prosecuted under international law. A coalition of civil society groups has also called for accessibility, procedural accommodations, and effective access to justice and reparations for victims with disabilities.

The Australian government should:

Support international efforts to protect the rights of people with disabilities in armed conflict by promoting accountability for disability-based abuses, ensuring that such violations are documented, and advocating for disability-inclusive humanitarian responses.
Support the inclusion in the Convention on Crimes Against Humanity of explicit protections against discrimination and disability-based persecution, ensure that crimes committed against people with disabilities are adequately recognized and prosecuted, and promote accessibility and procedural accommodations to enable victims with disabilities to participate effectively in investigations and judicial proceedings.

Strengthening International Support for Organizations of Persons with Disabilities
Civic space is shrinking in many parts of the world and organizations working on human rights face growing legal, political, and financial restrictions. International cooperation that strengthens civil society, including organizations of persons with disabilities is vital. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 report on the contraction of international humanitarian aid documented how these restrictions undermine the ability of civil society to protect and advance human rights. For instance, in Guatemala, US foreign aid cuts forced Colectivo Vida Independiente—the country’s only disability rights organization providing legal, psychological, and social support through a disability rights-based approach—to dismiss its staff and stop accepting new cases, leaving people with disabilities with significantly reduced access to specialized services, advocacy, and legal protection.

The Australian government should:

Support, consistent with its International Disability Equity and Rights Strategy and article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, international cooperation that encourages donor governments and multilateral development partners to provide sustained, flexible, and accessible funding to organizations of persons with disabilities. Promote organizations of persons with disabilities as essential partners in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of development and humanitarian programs, and encourage other countries to invest in strengthening their long-term institutional capacity and leadership.

Older People’s Rights

Treaty on Older People’s Rights
For over a decade, older people’s rights advocates—notably the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People, which Human Rights Watch is an active member of—have called on the United Nations to develop stronger safeguards for older people in international law. The collective advocacy of civil society led the UN Human Rights Council in April 2025 to establish an intergovernmental working group to draft a global treaty on the rights of older people.

The working group met for its first session in July 2026. The Australian government engaged with civil society prior to and during the working group’s first session. There was, however, little participation at the first session by states and civil society from the Pacific Island states.

At the conclusion of the first session, the chair laid out a process of consultations, meetings, and regional consultations to develop first a list of elements and then a zero draft text of the treaty by November 2027.

The legitimacy and effectiveness of the future treaty will depend not only on its substantive content but also on the inclusiveness and transparency of the process through which it is developed. While the process acknowledges “other stakeholders,” it falls short of the inclusive and participatory practice used in the drafting of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, namely the establishment of a working group tasked with preparing and presenting a draft text of the convention with representation of affected people, non-governmental organizations, and national human rights institutions.

As the draft proceeds, we remain focused on ensuring the treaty includes strong language to protect the rights of older people, both now and in the future.

The Australian government should:

Actively engage in the treaty drafting process to ensure the rights of older persons in Australia and globally.
Support a treaty text that:
- Recognizes ageism as a key driver of rights violations against older people and acknowledges other factors that exacerbate rights violations, including economic inequality and the impacts of climate change.
- Applies to all people who experience, or are at risk of experiencing, discrimination or denial of their rights because of their known or perceived older age.
- Recognizes the diversity of older people and the different forms of discrimination they experience, including intersectional and cumulative discrimination.
- Addresses the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political, and social—reflecting their indivisibility and interdependence.
- Includes strong implementation and accountability measures to ensure rights are realized in practice.
Support a treaty drafting process that includes mechanisms that enable the direct and effective participation of older persons and their representative organizations, civil society organizations, and national human rights institutions in the development of the zero draft, consistent with the inclusive approach that was central to the Disability Rights Convention drafting process.
Play a facilitation role in the Pacific to ensure the participation of Pacific Island states in the treaty working group, including through the regional consultations envisaged in the chair’s drafting process.

LGBT Rights

Around the world, rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding are threatening the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and the civil society groups that act on their behalf. LGBT people face heightened repression in many countries, while areas previously considered progressive are experiencing rapid regression. In Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and parts of Africa, the criminalization of same-sex conduct is expanding to criminalize LGBT identity, as well as information and speech about diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). In the United States and parts of Western Europe, SOGIESC-related rights are increasingly politicized and portrayed as inconsistent with national values, while governments roll back existing legislative protections. These actions are directly influenced by the global anti-gender movement and its growing influence.

At the UN level, there are increasing efforts to push back against progress made to guarantee protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics.

The Australian government should:

Together with other states, increase financial commitments to multilateral mechanisms such as the Global Fund to offset the impact of the US funding cuts. Australia’s pledged contribution for 2026-28 is the same amount as its previous pledge.
Continue to support SOGIESC-related rights and resolutions in multilateral forums, including at the UN Human Rights Council. Continue to support the mandate of the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Country specific concerns:

Indonesia
Waria (trans women) and men who have sex with men (MSM) face HIV prevalence rates dramatically higher than the general population in Indonesia. This is in part due to the extreme barriers to accessing HIV prevention and care because of government-sanctioned discrimination and targeting that has only intensified over the last decade. Structural violence and systemic discrimination by the Indonesian authorities forces LGBT people to depend almost entirely on international donor-funded programs for prevention, testing, and treatment services. With this lifeline now cut due to the USAID and other donor funding cuts in 2025, those most at risk of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia have been essentially abandoned.

The timing of the USAID cuts was compounded by the entry into force of Indonesia’s new Criminal Code on January 1, 2026, effectively criminalizing same-sex conduct for the first time in Indonesia’s history. The intersection of funding collapse and intensified criminalization creates a perfect storm: just as services disappear, the legal environment makes it more dangerous for LGBT people to seek the care that remains.

The Australian government should:

Help address the gap on HIV/AIDS prevention and care for LGBT populations (particularly funding outreach workers for trans and MSM populations) in Indonesia.

Japan
While Japan has made some progress on LGBT rights in recent years, there are several areas that fall short of international human rights standards. Australia played a key role in pressing Japan to revise its trans legal gender change law. It was successful, and the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 2023, but the revision process in the Diet has stalled.

The Australian government should:

Seek clarity from Japan on the revision process for its transgender laws.