John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year, 2011, marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The convention we know today was initially developed to deal with the massive number of people displaced by the Second World War in Europe. We should be proud of Australia's connection with the convention, and we should also be proud of our connection to the negotiation of the United Nations Charter and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

We should not forget the roles of Doc Evatt and Jessie Street and their ground­breaking work at the United Nations Confer­ence on International Organisation—better known as the San Francisco Confer­ence—in 1945. The Australian delegation, led by Doc Evatt with his unique intellect, drive and organisational ability, endeavoured to ensure that social justice and Labor values were injected into the constitutional architecture of the United Nations. While Evatt's contribut­ion is well known, I think it is important that we also recognise that of Jessie Street, an internationalist who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of women. She was the only woman on the Australian delegation to the San Francisco Conference. She was a strong advocate for the removal of restrictions on Jewish migration and for an increased intake of Jewish refugees to Australia. She was an inspiring figure.

As I noted at the launch of Ashley Hogan's book, Moving in the open daylight: an Australian at the United Nations, while Evatt's ubiquity and energy at the San Francisco Conference led to the joke that there were 'ten Evatts', a casual survey of what has been written about him would certainly lead to the impression that there were 'two Evatts'. Of course, there was only one Evatt. He was certainly not as skilled in the art of caucus or party management as Curtin or Chifley, but few leaders, before or since, have been. And it was Evatt's misfor­tune to be leader at a time when the internal pressures and conflicts of the party would have tested the diplomatic skills of the most conciliatory negotiator. However, Doc Evatt has been acknowledged around the world as a most significant international figure.

The United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees originated in the League of Nations before Evatt was a figure on the international stage. The first steps—the 1933 League of Nations Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees and the 1938 Convention Concern­ing the Status of Refugees—were significant milestones, but they provided only limited protections for displaced persons. The 1933 convention, for example, had just eight member state signatories, as well as substantial self-imposed limitations on the obligations of those signatories.

At its first meeting in 1946, the newly formed United Nations General Assembly recognised the urgency of the humanitarian crisis in Europe and resolved to find new homes for the millions of displaced people roaming aimlessly across the European continent or languishing in makeshift camps. In 1950 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was formed. The following year, on 28 July 1951, after tough negotiations and legal wrangling by signatories over the sovereignty of states and their responsibilities and obligations in the international system, the convention that underpins the work of the UNHCR was adopted. Australia acceded to the convention on 22 January 1954. That was during the life of the Menzies government.

As an international treaty instrument, it was borne out of the bloodshed and tragedy of the Second World War, but it remains a crucial international treaty in the modern world. While Europe is no longer devastated by a horrendous world war, the convention and its relevance as a refugee classification tool lives on. Throughout the debilitating civil wars in the Balkans, the tumult caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union and ongoing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, we have been reliant on the terms of the convention to provide vulnerable and displaced people with necessary protections enshrined in law.

In Africa, recent hope provided by the newly independent nation of South Sudan is tempered by events in other parts of the continent—the civil strife in Ivory Coast earlier this year, the recruitment of child soldiers en masse in the Central African Republic and the use of rape as a weapon in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr President, 144,000 people registered as refugees in South Africa last year. They are the victims of war and sexual violence who have traversed an entire continent to seek refuge. In 2008, scores of people were killed after a botched armed robbery started fighting that quickly spread through all of Port Elizabeth. This was a massive and violent demonstration against the presence of Somalis in South Africa. And the reason they left Somalia? Ethnic and religious violence.

Closer to home, the human rights needs of the Burmese people, so often highlighted over the last decade, is widely and rightly reported as Asia's refugee focal point. But so much concern still exists over the plight of human rights in Tibet and for Tamil Sri Lankans in their desire for equal rights in their own country. According to the most recent Global Trends figures published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as at January 2010, there were 2,121,630 refugees in Africa, and 4,524,200 refugees in Asia and the Middle East. That is 6,645,830 men, women and children in only two of the six UNHCR designated world regions. We must remember that no-one becomes a refugee by choice. It is a step demanded by circumstances, so often life threatening for individuals and families. It is a step borne out of the sheer determination of the human spirit to survive and protect those close to them.