The National Justice Project was recently invited to address a United Nations conference about ‘Strategic Litigation Network on Migrants and People on the Move in Asia Pacific’. The two-day event, held in Bangkok, was hosted by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN).
Our CEO George Newhouse, supported by solicitor Rosaleen Jeffries, presented on ‘Challenging Offshore Detention: Exploring a decade of strategic legal action in Australian Courts’ and highlighted the power of strategic litigation as a mechanism to address systemic injustice in Australia’s immigration detention regime. George was joined by fellow panelists Cheryl D’Souza from India and Waritsara Rungthong from Thailand. Our Chair Steven Castan was also in attendance at this important event.
Ms Jeffries welcomed the opportunity to attend the conference and help enrich the exchange of ideas across the Asia Pacific region with key insights into Australia’s immigration detention regime.
“The presentation provided a political history to Australia’s immigration detention regime, primarily the practice of ‘offshoring’ refugees and asylum seekers to detention centres on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island and resultant humanitarian crisis, “ she said.
“George discussed important constitutional challenges to the regime – most of which were unsuccessful – and how we have strategically used novel legal approaches which ultimately led to all detained children being evacuated from Nauru to Australia. He contextualised this sordid history in the terms of the ‘Race power’ contained in Australia’s constitution.
“We were proud to share the precedent-setting legal actions and novel legal arguments that the National Justice Project ran on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers over this past decade.
“Exploring these innovative legal arguments and how they built upon learnings from past cases in the Strategic Litigation Network with our partners provided insights and ideas to our fellow litigators in the room, we hope this will be a tool used to inform their own future strategic approaches to improving conditions for detained refugees,” she said.
