New Zealand National Consultation Meetings

Full Consultation Meeting Notes

Summary of Issues from the National Consultation Meetings

During the first part of August 2008 the Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade held three consultation meetings on the United Nations Universal Periodic Review Process. The meetings were held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Below is a summary of the main issues brought up at those meetings, arranged under the same headings as the Commission used for the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights. To read the full notes of each consultation meeting please see links above.

Children and Young People

  • Poverty, especially for children in households where a benefit is the main source of income
  • Harassment and bullying in schools
  • Ending child abuse
  • The right to education for children of people studying here
  • Lowering the age of criminal responsibility
  • Establishing standards for child labour
  • The rights of children in the family court and in the youth justice system
  • Impact on children if parents receiving DPB are forced back to work
  • Human rights education in schools.

Disabled people

  • Ratification of the Convention
  • More New Zealand Sign Language interpreters are needed
  • Equitable outcomes in education
  • Persistent inequalities in benefits between ACC compared with Disability Support Services benefits and other sources of benefits
  • Discrimination against mental health patients: compulsory treatment, lack of effective review mechanisms for those in compulsory care, seclusion, inadequate community support services. Maori and Pacific Peoples disproportionately represented in mental health statistics
  • Accessible buildings
  • Access to information
  • Establishing supported decision making as the norm rather than substituted decision making
  • Establishing the equal value of disabled lives, particularly in relation to bioethics
  • Resources to allow mainstreaming of all disabled children in education
  • Persistent poverty amongst disabled people.

Race Relations

  • Inadequate settlement services for migrants. Immigration policy often changes quicker than the support service can keep pace with
  • Discrimination against immigrants in employment and access to services
  • Signing the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
  • Lack of culturally appropriate foster homes for children of ethnic minorities
  • Cultural rights and practices versus human rights e.g. dowries and polygamy
  • Immigrants who lose their jobs can be in a precarious position with no income and no access to benefits
  • Refugee family reunification.

Civil and Political Rights

  • High rates of imprisonment, particularly amongst Maori
  • Inhumane treatment of people in detention
  • Victims rights and prisoners rights given equal treatment, not seen as in opposition to each other
  • Domestic violence, including against the elderly and disabled. Recent campaigns have not yet resulted in decreases in violence
  • Commitment to restorative justice for both victims and offenders
  • Asylum seekers access to services e.g. interpreters, health services
  • Discrimination against gay and lesbians, in work, at school
  • Recommendations from the HRC Inquiry into Discrimination against Transgender people need to be implemented
  • Immigration and anti-terrorist legislation breaches human rights protections especially around the use of secret information
  • Protection of older people in institutional care
  • Improving the position of sexual minorities.

Economic Social and Cultural Rights

  • Ratify remaining core ILO Conventions especially Conventions 138 and 183. Comply with the ILO Conventions already signed
  • Poverty reduction particularly for children in households where the main source of income is from a benefit. Indexing benefit levels to the median income to prevent erosion of benefit levels over time
  • Income inequalities in the labour market for women, Maori and Pacific Islanders and disabled people
  • Access to affordable, decent housing including home ownership for those who want it
  • Discrimination against older workers aged 50-70 years
  • Protection of the right to work for migrant and expat sex workers
  • Right to access to water
  • Pay and employment equity
  • Remove ethnic disparities in the access to benefits between Maori and Pacific peoples and the rest of the population
  • More women on the governance boards of private companies.

The Human Rights Framework

  • Constitutional reform including entrenching human rights protections and including the Treaty in our constitutional arrangements
  • Horizontal and vertical integration of human rights observance
  • Safeguards against corruption and guarantees of transparency in government decision making
  • Fair trade agreements NZ signs to include human rights protections
  • Systematic use of the human rights framework in the formulation of law and policy
  • A mechanism is needed to monitor the implementation the recommendations from the Treaty body reports.

Other

  • Access to services for rural people
  • Men’s and boy’s issues: literacy, access to health services, school and tertiary achievement levels, tackling issues that disproportionately affect males; work related injuries, alcohol and drug problems, gambling.
  • Support for NGO’s is inadequate especially around community development projects and advocacy.

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