Abstract
Since 1989, refugees seeking asylum in Australia who have arrived by boat have been detained by the Commonwealth Government. Australia is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (in 1990) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Prolonged mandatory detention, breaches many articles of these conventions. Indeed, Australia, by its current policies, breaches at least 13 articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The detention of children and the circumstances under which this has occurred has been the focus of a lot of criticism. Early Childhood Australia gives in the article Children of Asylum Seekers the following position about the incarceration of children: appropriate solutions have to be put in place in order to secure immediate and long-term refugee children's needs. In the article ?A child in detention : dilemmas faced by health professionals', The Medical Journal of Australia expresses concern for children held in detention through the case study of a 6-year-old boy. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which conducted the National Inquiry into Children in Detention, reproaches the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs for breaching the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child.
