News Archive
IU McKinney Students Faculty File Report with United Nations
10/11/2022
IU McKinney students who are part of the Program in International Human Rights Law were among those who filed a shadow report with the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The report alleges Australia is breaching the UN Convention Against Torture by engaging in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment. Professor George Edwards is the program’s director.
Others taking part in the research and writing of the report include students and faculty from Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Law in Thailand, and Australian Catholic University in Australia. The report is titled “Australia has Violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: Victims Include Indigenous People in Prisons (including Indigenous Women), Children in Prisons with Adults and in Other Cruel and Inhuman Conditions, Children Suffering Corporal Punishment, and Migrants in Offshore Immigration Detention Centres/Prisons.”
Australia is a party to the UN Torture Convention and has prepared its own report in advance of a hearing on whether the nation is in compliance, said Professor Edwards. The report filed by Professor Edwards and the other advocates is known as a “shadow report.” Such reports shadow comment on the government report, attempting to tell the UN the government report may not be the full story, Professor Edwards said.
The Program in International Human Rights Law, also known as PIHRL, has submitted over a dozen shadow reports to the United Nations in New York City and in Geneva. Students and recent graduates have made speeches on the floor of the United Nations hearings, presenting these shadow reports. The most recent presentations related to Russian Federation aggression in Ukraine (May 2022), the Taliban’s reclaimed exercise of sovereignty over Afghanistan (August 2021), and COVID-19 at Guantanamo Bay (February 2020). Other reports have involved alleged human rights violations in Chile, Panama, Nepal, the United States, Zambia, and other countries.
