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Thursday 10 October from 9.30am

Women from migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds can encounter significant challenges when seeking a safe and stable home in Australia. Some women experience family violence, exploitation, forced marriage and homelessness. These traumatic experiences impact on physical and mental health, wellbeing and hope for the future.

At the Home Truths webinar, we will discuss the challenges and barriers women face and the effective solutions and interventions that enable women to achieve independence and escape cycles of violence, exploitation and homelessness.

The webinar is on Thursday, 10 October from 9.30am and will run for an hour.

We will also launch the Mercy Foundation’s Grants to End Homelessness program for 2025.

Guest speakers include:

• Cecilie Kern, Mercy International Association, NGO Representative to the UN,  Chair NGO Committee on Migration. Cecilie will speak the state of affairs of migration and homelessness issues at the United Nations and Mercy advocacy efforts.
• Dr. Jessie Hohmann, Professor in Law, University of Technology Sydney and Right to Housing expert.
• Maeve Brown, CEO of Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre in conversation with:
• Magdalene Konneh, Lived Experience Expert and SGBV Specialist Caseworker, JRS.
• Helena Hassani, Modern Slavery Lead at the Mercy Foundation, who will speak about family violence, forced marriage and homelessness.
• Sunila Kotwal: Executive Officer, Immigrant Women SpeakOut Association. Sunila will speak about successful interventions and solutions to enable women to gain independence and end their homelessness.

Source: Australian Human Rights Commission

https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/childrens-rights/publications/help-way-earlier

Yesterday, Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner launched the report ‘Help way earlier!’: How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing. The report is calling for significant changes to how federal, state and territory governments approach child justice and the wellbeing of children who are or at risk of being caught up in the criminal justice system.

The report sets out 24 recommendations to elevate child justice and wellbeing to being a national priority, coordinating action across Australia’s federation and ensuring reform of our justice systems based on evidence and human rights.

The report highlights the need to address the human rights of children early on, rather than taking a punitive approach where children as young as 10 years old are caught up  in the criminal justice system.

The drivers of their contact with the justice system often stems from breaches of their most basic human rights. Poverty, intergenerational trauma, violence and abuse, racism, homelessness and inadequate health care.

The Commissioner spoke to 150 children and young people about what they need to stay out of trouble. Children said that they want to be safe and to have a place to live. They want to participate in positive activities. They want friends and supportive family relationships. Children want to be heard and have their views taken seriously. They want to be able to go to school and one day get a job. Children want to get extra help for themselves and their family members when it’s needed.

A home is fundamental to the safety and wellbeing of all, especially children. Homelessness and insecure housing is harmful and represents a serious breach of their human rights. It is incumbent upon all of us to urgently ensure that all children have a safe, permanent, affordable and appropriate home.

Recommendations for reform

This report recommends that national reform should be driven by:

• Australian Governments establishing a National Taskforce for reform of child justice systems
• the Australian Government appointing a Cabinet Minister for Children
• the Australian Government establishing a Ministerial Council for Child Wellbeing and
• the Australian Government legislating a National Children’s Act as well as a Human Rights Act, incorporating the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Reform also requires:

• positioning children at the centre of policymaking and service delivery
• empowering First Nations children, families and communities
• optimising community-based action
• building a capable and child-specialised workforce
• basing systems on data and evidence, and
• embedding accountability for the rights of children.

The report is the result of a project undertaken by the National Children’s Commissioner in 2023-24.

Read the executive summary here.

Access the full report here.

The Federal Court found that a former Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner owed her former domestic worker half a million dollars in unpaid wages.

A press release from the Clayton Utz pro bono team noted that when Ms Himalee Arunatilaka was appointed Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner in Australia in 2015, she brought out Ms Priyanka Danaratna to live and work at her home in Canberra. Ms Arunatilaka took the Ms Danaratna’s passport away when she arrived in Australian and never returned it.

For three years, Ms Danaratna worked from 6am until late into the evening, cooking, cleaning and washing for Ms Arunatilaka and her husband, seven days a week. During that time, she had only two days off after burning her hand while cooking.

According to the press release, Ms Danaratna was paid only $11,212 in total, or less than 65 cents an hour, sent directly to bank accounts in Sri Lanka. Ms Arunatilaka forbade her from leaving the residence alone without permission, and then only for short walks. Ms Danaratna had no contacts in Canberra, did not speak English, and without her passport had no way of leaving her work or returning home.

Legal response

Ms Danaratna was represented by the Clayton Utz pro bono team. On 15 August 2024, Justice Raper of the Federal Court of Australia found in Danaratna v Arunatilaka [2024] FCA 918 that Ms Arunatilaka had committed “significant breaches” of Australian employment law. Ms Arunatilaka was ordered to pay $374,151.90 in unpaid wages, plus a further $169,148.83 owing in interest on that amount, coming to a total of $543,300.73.

This is an internationally significant case, which follows the 2023 decision in Shergill v Singh [2023] FCA 1346  that after an official has left their diplomatic post, there is no diplomatic immunity available to protect that diplomat against Australian employment law claims by their domestic workers.

Ms Arunatilaka has chosen to ignore the Court and she now serves as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva.

The Mercy Foundation funded research into domestic servitude in 2019. The research Service or Servitude: A study of trafficking for domestic work by Heather Moore,  found that domestic workers in embassies in Canberra are at great risk of modern slavery. Read more about the research here.

We are delighted to announce that Helena Hassani has joined the Mercy Foundation as our inaugural Modern Slavery Lead. Helena is a human rights advocate and leading expert on the prevention of child and forced marriage and family violence. Helena has much experience in working with victim-survivors of family violence, modern slavery especially child and forced marriage and forced labour.

Helena is the Director of Boland Parwaz PTY LTD which is working towards a future without child and forced marriage. Through her organisation, Helena was selected as one of 44 global fellows of innovative social leadership by the US-based Echoing Green Foundation. Later this year she will travel to Ghana to meet other fellows and undergo training.

She is a multilingual female facilitator of Men’s Behaviour Change Program for Intouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence in Victoria. Helena is also a research assistant for the Anti-Slavery Australia at the University of Technology Sydney.

Helena has Master of Human Rights Law, Bachelor of Social Work and Bachelor of Health Science from Monash University.

Helena was a delegate to the United Nations in Geneva for the Annual Tripartite Consultation on Resettlement in 2023. She has also been an NGO delegate to the United National recently in March 2024 in New York for the Consultation on the Status of Women 68th Conference.

Helena was awarded a silver medal at the Women Changing the World Award 2024 for the Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Impact category.

Her vision is for a future where no girl experiences child or forced marriage.

We are excited to have Helena join the Mercy Foundation team. She brings much experience and expertise and will drive our work in addressing modern slavery in Australia.

Helena is also a poet and writes poems on forced marriage and issues related to violence against women and girls.

You can read more about Helena in this article.

The Mercy Foundation believes that housing should be considered first and foremost as a human right. All us have the right to live in peace, dignity and security. Governments have neglected their fundamental obligation to realise everyone’s human right to housing.  Without safe and secure housing, all other rights are at risk.

Kevin Bell, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, recently wrote an article about the right to housing. He argues that  a legislative, rights-based national housing strategy is needed to realise the right to housing. He writes that:

We are experiencing not only a socio-economic disaster. It is a human rights disaster. Decent housing is a pillar of the whole system of human rights. When the right to a decent home is put at risk or violated on a large scale, as it now is, this impacts a great many other rights. These other rights potentially include the right life, the right to health including mental health, the right to personal inviolability including the right of women to be safe in their own home, the right to be free of discrimination, the right to work a reasonable distance from home, and the right to be free of the many gross human rights violations that are associated with poverty, inequality of wealth, social exclusion and homelessness.

Addressing Australia’s housing and homelessness crisis will take strong leadership, political will, commitment and broad community support.

Read the article here.

Over the last few years the Mercy Foundation has advocated for the human right to housing. A rights based approach moves the conversation away from housing as an investment to housing as a fundamental right, accessible to all.

This brief from AHURI explains how the right to housing is understood in Australian and international law.

In 1980, the Australian Government ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Under the ICESCR, governments recognise the right of everyone to adequate housing and must take appropriate steps to ensure the realisation of this right.

Australia is unlike many other countries as it does not have a national human rights act or charter. There is no law that enshrines the right to adequate housing in Australia. Other countries have recognised this right and enforced it through legal or programmatic approaches. You can find out more and read the brief here.

A wealthy family in the UK were charged with exploitation of workers, in what amounts to a case of domestic servitude. The family employed domestic workers for their Swiss property where they ceased their passports, restricted their movements, grossly underpaid them for their work and forced them to work 18 hours per day.

Exploitation of domestic workers is not uncommon especially in foreign embassies. Listen to an interview about this case with Fiona David, founder of Fair Futures and architect of the Global Slavery Index here.

Read more about domestic servitude in Australia and Heather Moore’s research on this topic here.

 

We applaud the private members bill put forward by Kylea Tink, Federal Member for North Sydney and Senator David Pocock to reframe housing as a human right, mandating the Federal Government to make a long term plan to transform the housing system.

The proposed bill would require current and future governments to develop, implement and maintain a 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan in line with legislated objectives, including improving housing supply, affordability and ending homelessness. At its heart is the goal of ensuring everyone in Australia has an adequate home.

Over the last few years the Mercy Foundation has advocated for a rights based approach to housing. Homes are meant to be safe, secure and nurturing places where kids can do homework, play and thrive; where families create lasting memories over shared meals; where grandparents can pass down stories to younger generations; a place where we feel safe.

Homes are not meant to be an income generating asset in an investment portfolio for the wealthy.

Professor Jessie Hohmann is a leading expert on the right to housing. Jessie developed the booklet ‘ The right to housing: A Guide for Civil Society’ to help us advocate for housing as a human right. You can download a copy of the guide here.

We all know too well the damaging human cost when our right to housing is breached.