This year’s Human Rights Day marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This landmark document enshrines the inalienable rights that every human is entitled to, regardless of their race, religion, language, national or social origin, property, birth status, or political or other opinion.
In the decades since the adoption of the Declaration, human rights have become more widely recognised and guaranteed across the globe. This includes Australia, where we now have a national Human Rights Framework and Action Plan, and where three states and territories have their own human rights charters: the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and Queensland. These provide human rights protections for vulnerable groups such as people with disabilities, First Nations peoples, refugees, and migrants.
The theme of this year’s Human Rights Day is ‘Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All’. A key focus in our work at GLaD is on how these human rights frameworks, plans, and charters do and don’t protect people who use drugs, including those (with a history of) hepatitis C.
To mark this day, we are delighted to announce that our paper, ‘On tables, doors and listening spaces: Parliamentary human rights scrutiny processes and engagement of others’, has been awarded the Andrea Durbach Prize for Human Rights Scholarship. The Prize is named in honour of Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach and awarded annually to a work published in the Australian Journal of Human Rights that reflects the values and commitments underpinning Professor Durbach’s career and scholarship. These include the courage to push the boundaries of human rights debates; the creativity to examine issues that cut across different academic disciplines; and a desire to press for human rights accountability to ensure that the voices that are not always heard can be amplified.
In her work, Professor Durbach has written on the need ‘to make visible the “unseen”’ and to engage in a ‘staging of the hidden’. Similarly, our paper seeks to shed light on the often-unseen process of parliamentary human rights scrutiny. The article examines how this otherwise hidden parliamentary process is staged and the effects of that staging on human rights assessments of legislation before parliament. We find that there are problems with what issues and voices are placed at the table during these processes, concluding that:
Whilst public engagement may increase transparency, accountability and democracy of parliamentary committees, it is important to reflect on which publics are engaged though inquiries and which are excluded. We suggest, perhaps provocatively, that people who use drugs are the experts on how drugs legislation impacts (their) human rights, and this human rights expertise is valuable to – but seldom heard by – parliamentary human rights scrutiny committees.
As we reflect on a significant global anniversary for human rights, it is necessary to consider those humans who may (continue to) face barriers to the fulfilment of their rights and how those barriers can be overcome, including through reforms to human rights processes.
In awarding the Prize, the jury noted that:
This is an important but under-researched issue… We commend the authors’ creativity, the sophistication of their analysis, and their advocacy for a more thorough and transparent consideration of human rights in the legislative process.
We are delighted to have been awarded the Prize, grateful to the interviewees who gave their time to speak with us as part of our project on human rights and drug law reform, and to the article’s reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments.
You can read the full article here.