Australia: Disproportionate Removal of Aboriginal Children

(Sydney, March 27, 2025) – Western Australia’s child protection authorities are disproportionately removing children from Aboriginal families and placing them in out-of-home care, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Children continue to be removed from their homes nearly two decades after the Australian government issued an apology to First Nations peoples for forcibly removing their children.

The 86-page report, “‘All I Know Is I Want Them Home’: Disproportionate Removal of Aboriginal Children from Families in Western Australia,” describes how authorities in the state of Western Australia have been quick to remove children from Aboriginal mothers fleeing domestic violence and from Aboriginal parents without adequate housing, rather than providing appropriate services to address domestic violence and homelessness. Western Australia has the highest rate of overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care of any state or territory in Australia, and Aboriginal children are more than 20 times more likely to be living in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous children.