Aboriginal legislation in Australia heavily criticized by Amnesty International

A story on today’s National Times, a well-regarded Australian newspaper, highlights Amnesty International’s criticism of legislation relating to the intervention in Australia’s Northern Territory (discussed in a previous posting in this blog). A wider campaign by the same organization accuses the legislation of being discriminatory and, most importantly, paternalistic, in the sense that it has not met requirements of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (the object of much debate in this blog), and that it simply assumes the government knows what’s best for aboriginal peoples. A current campaign by Amnesty International is trying to put pressure on the Australian Senate not to approve the legislation, which has already cleared the House of Representatives.

Written by Lucas Lixinski