Ignoring International Obligations: Blocking UN Human Rights Delegates in Australia

Bureaucracy, in a formulation by the great German sociologist Max Weber, fanatically defends secrecy, and is bound to confect any explanation in doing so.  When it comes to swatting away scrutiny by United Nations human rights delegates, local officials can be relied upon to obfuscate, blur and lie about a Member State’s observance of conventions and fundamental norms.  In October 2022, and again in December 2025, UN bodies have been trying to piece together various troubling pieces of the Australian criminal justice system.  In a country lacking a bill of rights, administrators and officials have often shown themselves indifferent to their obligations in international law.

In 2022, the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) was blocked from accessing Queensland and New South Wales prisons.  Till that point, the Subcommittee had made over 80 visits to more than 60 countries.  Only on one other occasion was a visit terminated.  A press release from the Office of the UN High Commissioner from Human Rights (OCHR) noted that the SPT had “experienced difficulties in carrying out a full visit at other locations, and was not given all the relevant information and documentation it had requested.”

The head of the four-member delegation, Aisha Shujune Muhammad, said at the time that Australia had clearly breached its obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).  The termination of the visit scheduled for October 16 to 27 was “deeply regrettable” but showed a profound ignorance on the part of prison and government officials about the SPT’s mandate. “The SPT is neither an oversight body, nor does it carry out investigations or inspections,” explained Muhammad. Its purpose was to furnish State Parties with confidential recommendations on how best to establish “effective safeguards against the risk of torture and ill-treatment in places of deprivation of liberty.”

The SPT Report on the matter went on to note “persistent negative media coverage” of its members, “including pernicious remarks from government officials in certain regions, amounting to what the Subcommittee would qualify as a smear campaign.”  These “no doubt contributed in some cases to the hostility faced by the Subcommittee, as evidenced by the repetition of disparaging quotes from government officials by the administrators of some of the places of deprivation of liberty that it visited.”

Such coarse ignorance towards the functions of another UN body, this time the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, was again in evidence when the Northern Territory blocked it from visiting watch houses, mental health facilities, and prisons for adults and children.  The Working Group, during its visit from December 1 to 12, faced a souped up response from the NT Corrections Minister Gerard Maley that the visit could not be accommodated given concerns about “operational capacity, safety and workforce resourcing priorities”.  This rationale did not seem to apply to a visit conducted that same week by a delegation from the United Arab Emirates, presumably less likely to ruffle feathers in visiting the Holtze Youth Detention Centre and Darwin Correctional Centre.

The gloomy November report by the territory’s Ombudsman, which was cognisant that “watch house cells were very crowded with no opportunity for prisoners to leave the cell”, suggested the authorities had much to hide.  Adding to this the use of exposed toilets made such a “combination of conditions […] undignified and inhumane, particularly where prisoners were subjected to these conditions for extended periods of time.”

The same fate of bureaucratic apologetics befell the Working Group in attempting to visit youth detention centres in Western Australia.  Both the Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre and the youth wing of the high-security adult prison south of Perth called “Youth 18” were deemed off limits till the state’s Justice Department had deemed it “appropriate and safe to do so”.  The WA Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia confirmed that visits were being made by the delegates to certain detention facilities only “where safe and appropriate”.

The memory of the 2022 SPT visit must have lingered in its sting, given the Subcommittee’s findings that the Banksia Hill Detention Centre lacked running water, working showers, or televisions, with cells having mattresses on floors.  Children were also left alone – effectively “de facto solitary confinement” – for up to 23 hours a day, with cell lighting externally controlled.  One wonders how tardy the WA government has been in addressing the matter.

The Working Group statement was not as harsh as that of the SPT.  But its bite was toothy.  In its December 12 statement, the members noted that, while having enjoyed both unimpeded access to Commonwealth places of detention and freedom of inquiry inspecting detention facilities in the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales, the same could not be said about Western Australia and the Northern Territory.  Such a “complete lack of cooperation by authorities” had undermined “the Working Group’s ability to implement its mandate and deprives detainees of access to independent international protection.”

The delegates also identified the continued “gross overrepresentation of First Nations people in the prison population, the shocking detention of children as young as 10, and the punitive approach to migrants”.  The “extremely young ages from which children may be detained in Australia” violated “fundamental human rights norms.”  Punitive migration detention proved particularly persistent, with detainees facing “extremely lengthy periods”, sometimes exceeding 15 years.  The detention of non-citizens and their transfer to Nauru pursuant to a Third Country Resettlement Arrangement further “dismayed” the Working Group.

Many Australian politicians, always happy to execrate foreign states for their human rights blemishes, make it their due not to comment on violations taking place closer to home.  But the Australian Greens sensed something has gone off in the process, noting how little the Commonwealth has done regarding its human rights obligations in this field.  Justice Spokesperson for the Greens, Senator David Shoebridge, underlines the stark point that the territory’s budget is funded to the tune of 80%, a figure that inevitably covers incarceration facilities.  “If they’re funding it, they should demand to open it.  If they won’t, they should cut off funding to these torture factories.”

Australia is regarded as a liberal democracy, with a smattering of human rights legislation its various governments observe with resignation, when convenient.  Along with most states, its attitude to the UN and its various emissaries remains guarded.  Every so often, a feral sort of sovereignty asserts itself, beating back those human right scrutineers who do much in trying to fracture the cruelties bureaucracy seeks to mask.

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