Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

the Foreign Relations Law of the United States section 702, van Boven 1993 para 13).The term ‘gross’ refers to the severity, scope or size of the violations as well as the typeof human right being violated (van Boven 1993 para 8).Indirect racial discrimination continues into the present both in child welfare andjuvenile justice systems, as documented in Part 6. Indigenous children and their familiescontinue to be judged from an Anglo-Australian perspective which demonstrates littlerespect for Indigenous values, culture and child-rearing practices. It provides little or noencouragement of or support for Indigenous parenting. Indigenous children continue tobe transferred, permanently or temporarily, from their families and communities to thecustody and control of non-Indigenous Australians.Because laws singled out Indigenous children for removal by administrative meansand on the ground of their race or colour, they were racially discriminatory. Whether theymay have been partially motivated by a benign purpose is immaterial. In determiningwhether discrimination has occurred, the purpose or intention of the alleged discriminatoris not decisive. In international legal usage the term ‘discrimination’ refers to distinctionswhich have the purpose or effect of impairing the enjoyment or exercise, on an equalfooting, of human rights.Senior government officials clearly knew they were in breach of Australia’sinternational legal obligations. For example, writing on 6 July 1949 to theCommonwealth Department of the Interior, A R Driver, Administrator of the NorthernTerritory, stated,There are certain restrictions which must remain imposed on Aborigines even though they are atvariance with the complete ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (AustralianArchives No AA ACT: CRS F1 1943/24).The Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples reported in 1994 onCanada’s relocation of the Inuit peoples of the High Arctic in 1953-55. The relocationinvolved coercion, separation of the people into different groups by force, holding peoplein the High Arctic against their will and denial of family allowance and other universalbenefits. The Royal Commission found that ‘the relocation was an ill-conceived solutionthat was inhumane and damaging in its design and effects. The conception, planning andsupervision of the relocation did not accord with Canada’s then prevailing internationalcommitments’ because the rights declared in the Universal Declaration ‘were recognizedby the Government of Canada at the time of relocation’ (page 157). As a result the‘relocatees’ had an entitlement to redress including compensation (page 164). The sameanalysis and conclusion apply to the forcible removal of Australian Indigenous children.GenocideGenocide was first defined in a detailed way in the 1948 Convention on thePrevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Australia ratified the Conventionin 1949 and it came into force in 1951.