UNITED NATIONS WORKING GROUP ON ARBITRARY DETENTION TO VISIT AUSTRALIA

22 May 2002


The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention will visit Australia from 24 May to 6 June 2002 at the invitation of the Government.

The visit will relate to Australia’ s administrative custody of unauthorized arrivals in the country. The Working Group will meet with the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, authorities of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade and other senior Government officials. The Working Group will also meet with representatives of Australian human rights non-governmental organizations and will visit several Australia’ s reception facilities and processing and detention centres.

The delegation will be headed by Louis Joinet, Chairman/Rapporteur of the Working Group. The report of the visit will be published as an Addendum to the Working Group’ s report to the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on Human Rights, which will be held next spring.

Country visits allow the Working Group, through direct dialogue with the Government concerned and representatives of civil society, to understand better the situation prevailing in a particular country. The Commission on Human Rights has on numerous occasions encouraged Governments to invite the Working Group to their countries so as to enable it to discharge its mandate even more effectively. The Working Group has previously carried out fact-finding missions concerning the issue of immigrants and asylum seekers to Romania and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Other countries visited by the Working Group were Bhutan, the People’ s Republic of China, Indonesia, Nepal, Peru and Viet Nam.

The Working Group was established on 5 March 1991 by Commission resolution 1991/42. Its mandate was clarified and extended by resolutions 1997/50 and 2000/36 and subsequently confirmed by resolutions 2001/40 and 2002/42. The Working Group is composed of five independent Experts appointed according to criteria governing equitable geographical distribution. In addition to Mr. Joinet (France), the members of the group are Soledad Villagra de Biedermann (Paraguay), Leyla Zerroügui (Algeria) and Tamás Bán (Hungary). An Expert from Asia should be appointed soon by the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights.