Sri Lankan Children in Immigration Detention in Australia: Human Rights and State Responsibility

Abstract

There are many families in immigration detention in Australia. People who are fleeing Sri Lanka devastated by the ethnic conflict between Tamil Tigers & Sri Lankan government have the same basic needs as decent living standards, social equality, health care and medicine. The Australian government maintains a policy of indefinite mandatory detention of asylum seekers. According to the current legislation in Australia, asylum seekers who arrive by boat, must be taken ���??as soon as reasonably practicable���?��� to a Regional Processing Country unless the Minister determines otherwise. Sri Lanka has been co-operating with Australia to return these migrants. Children who are in this situation are very vulnerable and need special protection. There are existing international Human Rights and Child Rights standards and mechanisms, but their implementation is unsatisfactory. It is clear that Australia���??s system of mandatory immigration detention of children is fundamentally inconsistent with Australia���??s human rights obligations such as ICCPR, ICESCR, CRC, Torture Convention and Customary International Law. The children in detention on Christmas Island live in converted shipping containers the majority of which are 3 x 2.5 meters. Children are effectively confined to these rooms for many hours of the day as they are the only private spaces that provide respite from the heat. The lack of school education on Christmas Island for teenagers has had negative impacts on their learning and may have long term impacts on the cognitive development of these children. And also the level of mental distress of children in detention is evident by very high rates of self-harm. The main intention of this paper is to find out the duty owed by Australia and Sri Lanka to these children under International Law. This paper also discusses whether the current standards and mechanisms are sufficient to deal with the current problems and suggest how it could be further developed.