Literature Review on Human Rights and Social Advocacy

Literature Review on Human Rights and Social Advocacy

Introduction

Most nations adhere to a standard set of human rights, which are inherent to all its citizens without discrimination. For these rights to function correctly, both individuals and the government have roles to play. Individuals have a part to familiarize themselves with these rights while the government has a part of delivering services, decisions, and policies that are in-line with human rights. Social advocacy includes activities that aim to protect the social rights of individuals. Social advocacy plays a role in promoting social inclusion, justice, and equality, and it incorporates themes such as community building, civil rights, and individual rights. Where rights are involved, obligations are required. Therefore, there is always a need to balance between the rights and obligations of individuals and the government. This essay will conduct a literature review on the importance of balancing between rights and obligations using media reports, academic research, and theoretical insights in contemporary Australia.

Australia has an independent human rights body that promotes human rights awareness. Moreover, most of the human rights it adopts are ones developed by its Parliament through democracy, and the Australian constitution protects human rights. Examples of obligations and rights of individuals in Australia are equality, right to life, freedom of movement, humane treatment and protection of families and children. Thus, citizens are entitled to enjoy these rights and also to abide by the rules that protect these rights. All citizens have a moral obligation to safeguard these rights. The government has rights and obligations are to put in place laws and policies that match individual rights and responsibilities (Mulesky et al,2019). They also have a role in improving human rights in the community, and this can only be effectively done if they understand and support human rights (Tollet,2019). Citizens in Australia view human rights in terms of problems and violations of human rights. Most violations in Australia occur to people who are vulnerable to human rights abuse such as asylum seekers, Aboriginal people, people living with a disability, and those living in poverty. However, the government has responsibilities to protect human rights.

Human rights are familiar to most individuals and efforts to ensure the efficiency of human rights have been stressed on over time. However, responsibility towards one another is a crucial aspect that dictates how these rights are applied by individuals to one another (Sandholtz et al,2019). The importance of fulfilling obligations has been mentioned throughout history, despite that the need to enforce these obligations have been discovered recently (Mulesky et al,2019). For example, Aristotle believed that an essential part that is needed for a community to flourish is members engaging in virtuous actions, which is a fulfillment of duty to other human beings (Neumann et al,2018). Natural law theorist also viewed that the state should have a social contract that spells out agreed rules of agreement on how citizens are entitled to live and relate with another (Sandholtz et al,2019). Political philosophers such as Thomas Paine also emphasized on the role of obligations in fostering a harmonious society (Mulesky et al,2019). He further simplified this by mentioning that a Declaration of Rights is simply by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties. Fulfillment of obligations needs a social, moral, and legal approach so that the civic virtue behind responsibilities can be revisited.

The obligation to human rights is usually viewed as a responsibility of the government, but individuals have various roles to play (Sandholtz et al,2019). This begins when individuals respect the rights that others are entitled too. An example is right to life whereby as much as everyone is entitled to be alive; no one is expected to take away another person’s life. This balance is necessary, but it becomes challenging when there is a dilemma between the duty of care and the right to autonomy (Guibert et al,2016). This is because care providers of aged people have a responsibility of ensuring health and well-being of their care recipients and yet the individuals have the right to live the way they prefer regardless whether they put their lives at risk (Barret et al,2016).

It is evident that the government of Australia makes efforts to strike a balance between rights and obligations. Since early in history, Australia was part of the active participants in the development of international human rights standards (Tolley,2019). Over time, Australia endorsed legal binding and non-binding instruments to improve its mechanisms of curbing human rights violations (Taylor,2018). Australia also enters a number of treaties that help them implement obligations domestically. These treaties include optional protocols that protect: persons with disabilities, child involvement in armed conflict, child prostitution, discrimination against women, and the death penalty.

Moreover, a Law Council evaluates the human rights performance of Australia whenever legislative policy reforms are being made and when recommendations are being proposed. It is remarkable that the Australian government makes voluntary commitments with respect to human rights (Allan,2015). For instance, in 2015, the Australian government: held a referendum to  recognize Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders during Parliamentary elections, setting apart a one million dollar package to combat violence against women and children, improving the way by which persons with disability are treated by the criminal justice system, setting lawful measures of protecting sexual and gender discrimination, helping in the resettlement of refugees and advancing protection of human rights by adopting the agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (Donaldson,2016).

There are few areas where the Australian government has failed to strike a balance between rights and obligations. For example, it is ironic that the Australian constitution does not contain a Bill of Rights, but instead, it only includes necessary provisions such as freedom of religion.

The explicit individual rights present in the Australian constitution are five, and these include freedom of religion in Section116, protection against unjust acquisition of property in Section51, protection against discrimination in terms of state residency in Section 117 and the right to vote in Section 41. Apart from these, other reasons that it adopts are those passed by the Commonwealth (Dixon,2016). It is argued that the Australian Constitution was not drafted to include the Bill of Rights, but the constitution would protect the fundamental freedoms in the Bill of Rights.

Moreover, some individual judges stated that there was no need to include the Bill of Rights in the constitution when it comprised of many rights and embodied most of the things in the Bill of Rights. Some people still argued that the rights and freedoms in the constitution were not the same as the ones in the Bill of Rights but were implying what is in the Bill (Nagel,2017). However, it is said that the focus on the incorporation of Bill of Rights in the constitution caused neglection on the fact the Federal government could protect human rights.

The Australian government has also failed in some of its obligations to civil and political rights. The most recent case was its neglection of asylum seekers and refugees in 2018. Despite its resolution to protect the rights of asylum seekers, it was evident that policy did not trigger any positive actions by the government concerning immigration (Martin,2015). This case happened when 600 refugees remained in Nauru and 570 refugees Papua New Guinea, and they suffered poor metal health due to the harsh detention they were accustomed to (Essex,2015). This led to the suicide of 12 refugees (Essex,2015). It was unfortunate that the Australian government only acted after legal intervention where lawyers threatened to report the issue to court. It was after this threat that Australia allowed relocation of 100 children from Nauru to Australia (Martin,2015). The immigration officer depicted lack of obligation because he denied medical transfers to asylum seekers, yet he was granting visas to foreign tourists.

Another case that showed a lack of obligation of the Australian government is the case where the Australian state and territories set the age for criminal responsibility at ten years (Russell et al,2016). The Youth Justice System recommended an increase of the age to twelve. However, in 2017 April, it was discovered that two boys were in solitary custody. This was against the United Nations Convention against Torture, and it displayed the lack of obligation and humanity of the state government (Goldson et al,2016) . Failure to uphold the responsibility of human rights was also evident in 2018, and it was about foreign policy. Australia was failing to raise concerns about human rights in countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam, where human rights violations were ubiquitous. It was ironic that Australia was working with the countries mentioned to conduct trade and maintain border securities, yet it could not raise concerns when the countries were facing human rights violations.

Another report discovered that Australia was not fully meeting the rights of persons with disability. This was proved after research showed that half of the population in Australian prisons have cognitive and physical impairment (Harley et al,2018). The fact that Torres Strait Islander people and Aboriginal were 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than other people in the Australian population depicted another level of lack of obligation to fair application of human rights (Brolan et al,2018). The people with disability were vulnerable to neglect, abuse, and lack of adequate resources. Moreover, research by Human Rights Watch found out that prisoners with disabilities regularly experienced harassment, sexual violence, and racism from other prisoners and even staff. It is further disturbing that prisoners with cognitive impairments could be put in solitary confinement for several months (Harley et al,2018). This action shows the insensitivity of the policymaking system and the government at large. Elderly people also faced some discrimination of human rights since they were subject to neglect and financial manipulation.

The freedom of religion is allowed in Australia, and it is also regulated with prohibitions to a certain degree. It is, however, difficult to discern the legal protections that govern religious freedom (Beck,2018). This is because the Australian Constitution does not allow the Commonwealth to be involved with laws that govern religion in Australia. This is found in Section 116 of chapter five (Beck,2018). The protection of the human rights act by the federal state ensure that they do not inhibit or impact religious activities. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to practice their religion in Australia, yet the Commonwealth had declared them a threat to national security due to their prejudicial defense (Beck,2018).

Conclusion

It is clear that both the individuals and the government of Australia understand human rights. However, the part of fulfilling obligations of human rights has posed some challenges since the emphasis has been on implementing the rights rather than understanding them. Striking a balance between obligations and rights have also depicted some problems to both the individuals and the government. It is, however, possible for this balance to exist in the country if the reports and reviews analyzed above are used as metrics for learning to strike a balance.

References

Allan, J. (2015). Australian Originalism Without a Bill of Rights: Going Down the Drain with a    Different Spin. J Allan,’Australian Originalism Without a Bill of Rights: Going Down the     Drain with a Different Spin'(2015), 6, 1-32.

Beck, L. (2018). Religious Freedom and the Australian Constitution: Origins and Future. Routledge.

Brolan, C. E., & Harley, D. (2018). Indigenous Australians, Intellectual Disability and      Incarceration: A Confluence of Rights Violations. Laws, 7(1), 7.

Cunneen, C., Goldson, B., & Russell, S. (2016). Juvenile justice, young people and human rights in Australia. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 28(2), 173-189.

Dixon, R. (2016). An Australian (partial) bill of rights. International Journal of       Constitutional             Law, 14(1), 80-98.

Donaldson, M. (2016). Aboriginal representatives in Parliament. Australian Socialist, 22(2), 10.

Essex, R. (2016). Torture, healthcare and Australian immigration detention. Journal of medical     ethics, 42(7), 418-419.

Lor, A., Thomas, J. C., Barrett, D. H., Ortmann, L. W., & Guibert, D. J. H. (2016). Key ethical    issues discussed at CDC-sponsored international, regional meetings to explore cultural             perspectives and contexts on pandemic influenza preparedness and response.             International journal of health policy and management, 5(11), 653.

Martin, G. (2015). Stop the boats! Moral panic in Australia over asylum seekers. Continuum,        29(3), 304-322.

Mulesky, S., & Sandholtz, W. (2019). Do Human Rights Treaty Obligations Matter?. Available    at SSRN.

Nagel, R. F. (2017). American judicial review in perspective. In Protecting Rights Without a Bill of Rights (pp. 225-238). Routledge.

Taylor, S., & Neumann, K. (2018). Australia and the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum: A   Case Study of the Making of International Refugee and Human Rights Law. International     Journal of Refugee Law, 30(1), 8-30.

Tolley Jr, H. (2019). The UN commission on human rights. Routledge.