A report in the Sydney Morning Herald says world leading human rights lawyer and barrister Geoffrey Robertson says that Australia’s coronavirus border regime breaches the human rights of tens of thousands of expats stranded overseas, with national cabinet prepares to sign-off on more rescue flights ahead for Christmas.
The report in The Sydney Morning Herald says that Robertson, described as the progressive Australian-born founder of the legendary London-based Doughty Street Chambers and one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers, says the caps on airport arrivals clashed with a key United Nations treaty which enshrined a person’s right to return home, adding, “I think the policy is a breach and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been challenged.”
He added, “It is a serious breach if you don’t allow your people to come home, albeit with necessary quarantine.,” “It’s a total failure of government that it can’t allow its people under whatever necessary COVID conditions to come home.”
Robertson also said the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guaranteed the right of a person to leave their own country freely and states no one should be “arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country”, with the treaty containing exemptions for national security, public order or public health but Robertson arguing the sweeping caps were overly punitive because the 14-day hotel quarantine system dealt with the health challenges of returning citizens.
The report goes on to say that about 36,000 Australians are stranded abroad but limits on how many can land at airports in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and Northern Territory have forced airlines to operate flights with an average of just 30 passengers each.
While the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Home Affairs has been contacted for comment, in September, a spokesperson for DFAT said the federal government had expanded its assistance program for Australians in financial distress overseas, adding, “Where commercial flights are not available, we continue to work with airlines and other governments to help Australians find ways to get home”.
Australian Human Rights Commission president Rosalind Croucher recently also warned federal and state governments could be violating the rights of parents and children to be reunited by preventing them from entering or leaving the country, saying governments may be breaching the Convention on the Rights of the Child because they could not reunite parents and children in an “expeditious manner” into and out of the country.
An edited report from The Sydney Morning Herald by John Alwyn-Jones
