Some information on the Society for Threatened Peoples

Society for Threatened Peoples
(Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker/GfbV) (GfbV)

Web site http://www.gfbv.de
Email gfbv-international@pt.lu
Address:
2, rue Louis XIV
L-1948 Luxemburg
Tel.: +352 - 262 586 87
Fax.: +352 - 262 586 88
in dringenden Fällen: Tel. + Fax: +352 - 264 830 33

USA
Sharon Silber
690 Fort Washington Ave / Apt. 4G
New York City, NY 100 40
Email sharonsilber@aol.com

The Society for Threatened Peoples is a nonprofit Human Rights Organisation to promote the human Rights of religious and ethnic minorities and Indigenous Peoples.
The Society has consultative status as NGO at the United Nations (ECOSOC).

Australia - Australia's 100th Anniversary - Indigenous Peoples are still Victims of Racial Discrimination
Statements at the United Nations
NEW: statements to the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Commission
GfbV's Statements at the United Nations 57th Session of the UN Human Rights Commission

Racial Discrimination - Aborigines in Australia

57th Session of the Commission of Human Rights 2001

Written Statement by the Society for Threatened Peoples

Item no. 6 of the Agenda
Racial Discrimination

Society for Threatened Peoples would like to draw the attention of the honorable United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the situation of Aborigine peoples in Australia. For several years now, the Australian government of John Howard has come under fire for its attitude towards Australia's 430,000 Aborigines. They are the country's most disadvantaged group, who approximately make up 2.6 percent of the 19 million population.

Even United Nations expert treaty committees, CERD, HRC and CESCR, have all concluded that Australia continues to perpetrate human rights violations against its Aboriginal peoples particularly in reference to the mandatory sentence laws in the states of Northern Territory and Western Australia. Under these laws, repeat property offenders are jailed automatically, including juveniles. Most of them are Aborigines.

The second major point has been the Native Title Amendments on land law in Australia.
Australia is the only country in the world with a Constitution which permits racially discriminatory laws.
Additional to these land laws, all figures on social infrastructure and wealth (education, health care, income rates, unemployment, life expectations etc.) show a continuing and significant disparity between Aborigines and non-Aborigines.

Society for Threatened Peoples believes that there is a deep and systemic problem in the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples which requires a concerted approach by international bodies like the United Nations Committee on Human Rights (UNHRC) in order to guarantee their survival as distinct peoples.
Therefore, we urge UNHRC to push Australia's government for a fundamental change in its policy on Aborigine peoples, i.e. to particularly withdraw the Native Title Act Amendment and to abolish the mandatory sentencing laws.
In addition to that Society for Threatened Peoples asks UNHRC to request the European Union to review and appropriate its relationship with Australia according to the human rights standard and in the spirit of its resolution on indigenous peoples of 1998.