What do ASIO’s adverse security assessments of refugees actually mean?
There has been some progress towards achieving due process for Australia’s “legal black hole” refugees.
Opinion – Page 47
Playing by the Rules – in sport and life
By Paul Oliver. This article is part of our March theme, Sport and Human Rights. A coach has no access for her wheelchair to get into the local clubhouse. A spectator yells racist remarks at an Aboriginal player during a footy match. A team excludes a gay athlete from making the rep teams because it might […]
Military training vs. “serious games”: human rights & video games
By James Petty. This article is part of a series on human rights and video games. In most reviews and critical examinations of video games, analysis tends to focus on a few specific elements of gaming: violence (how much and what kind), narrative (its quality and how it is delivered) and player experience (what it is […]
The Art of Video Game Violence
By Brendan Keogh. This article is part of a series on human rights and video games. Videogames are art. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn’t know what videogames are or they don’t know what art is. Videogames are creative works produced by creative people trying to express something. It’s that simple. Just like all forms of […]
Not Just a Lecture: How Gamers Create their Own Human Rights Meaning
By Benjamin Riley. This article is part of a series on human rights and video games. Like any artistic medium, video games have the capacity to engage us with the concerns of marginalised and persecuted people in the world. Of course, literature, visual art and theatre have been doing this for a long time. While […]
The world adopts an Arms Trade Treaty, but will it work?
Armed violence kills more than half a million people each year, small arms being responsible for a great proportion of these deaths. As Stephanie Koorey recently noted in Inside Story, while small arms and other conventional weapons do not cause wars, they do contribute to the “outbreak, intensity and duration of conflict”. As a consequence, […]
Right Now Specials 1: Video Games and Human Rights
Video games are a massive part of Australian and international popular culture. In 2012, the industry recorded more than $1 billion in sales in Australia. According to a 2011 study of gamers between 18 and 40 years of age, around 2 years of a person’s life can be spent on gaming. Discussion of the impact […]
Introducing Road to Refuge
By André Dao As we head to the September election, we can be sure that the political rhetoric surrounding asylum seekers will only get worse. Just yesterday, the Liberal Party posted an ad on social media that casually linked boat arrivals with street crime in Western Sydney – despite the fact that of 12,100 asylum seekers released […]
The Economic Cost of Our Asylum Seeker Policy
By Sienna Merope Australia’s current mandatory detention policy not only breaches our legal and ethical obligations, it is also a colossal waste of money. Mandatory detention of what the Federal Government likes to call “Irregular Maritime Arrivals” was first introduced in 1989. Under the policy, all asylum seekers who arrive by boat are put in […]
Creative Writing and Human Rights
By Blue Mahy Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. – C.S. Lewis I believe what C.S. Lewis meant is that literature has a symbiotic relationship with the “real” world. Literature takes from the real world but within literature is also the power to reshape it. This is not to say that […]
The challenges of being a Muslim woman in a multicultural society
Muslim women don’t have to choose between their religious identity and their Australian identity, they are in a position to embrace both.
Muslim Women Kick Goals
By Amna K-Hassan This article is part of our March theme, Sport and Human Rights. It’s also part of a series of articles looking specifically at the role of women in sport. “Football doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” This was the inscription on the medallion given to every player at the end of our […]