Refugee Action Collectives have launched an open letter asking the Minister for Home Affairs Clare O'Neil to help refugees stranded in Indonesia.
UNHCR
Tributes to Stewart West were powerfully worded, but hearing Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton honour him for the kinds of things they mostly do not do made me angry. Emily McGrath looks at the legacy of her late grandfather.
The UNHCR said Australia has violated Torres Strait islanders' rights by ignoring their concerns about rising seas caused by climate change. Binoy Kampmark reports.
Chris Slee reports on a protest calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court for committing genocide against the Tamil people.
Four hundred men are still protesting in the Manus Island detention centre. They are calling for nothing less than their freedom and will not move to another centre on the Island. They have held out since the Australian government shut down the centre and removed services on October 31.
November 15 was the 107th consecutive day of protest on Manus Island since the Australian government announced it would close the centre.
When the Olympic Games begin, the news headlines will be swamped with stories of new world records in this or that sporting field. We will be whipped into a frenzy about it. There will be discussions all around the world about how the record was broken, about the ferocious competition to produce record-breaking athletes, about performance-inducing drugs.
Meanwhile, much more significant world records will barely rate a mention in the media.
Senate rejects bid to make unemployed wait for welfare
An attack on young people has been defeated. A measure to force jobseekers under the age of 25 to wait an additional four weeks before accessing unemployment benefits has been defeated in the Senate, 30 votes to 35.
Labor and the Greens opposed the bill, announced in the May federal budget, meaning six of the eight crossbenchers had to vote with the government for the bill to pass.
More than 100 asylum seekers in detention on Manus Island have signed an appeal to Europeans for help. They say that just like the asylum seekers in Europe, they have fled war and persecution and like them they need safety and resettlement. They request European countries “to urge the Australia government to cease the illegal detention of us…”
Almost 1000 refugees and asylum seekers are indefinitely detained on Manus Island and a similar number, including families with children, are on Nauru.
The United States was criticised for its human rights standards on May 12 after the country's compliance with international human rights standards were assessed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR).
The UN criticised the US for police violence, racial discrimination, torture, use of the death penalty, and Guantanamo Bay prison, among other issues.
