Human Rights 2019 - Human Rights and Australia's Treatment of Refugees

This panel, chaired by Jeanine Hourani will see our three panellists, Katie Robertson (Director of Legal Advocacy, Human Rights Law Centre), Shukufa Tahiri (Refugee Council of Australia) and David Mejia-Canales (Senior Policy Adviser, Federation of Community Legal Centres) discuss the current state of, and future prospects for, refugee policy and practice.
Bio: Katie Robertson is the Director of Legal Advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre and leads the Centre’s work advocating for the rights of refugees and people seeking asylum.
Katie has extensive strategic litigation and advocacy experience focusing particularly on Australia’s treatment of refugees. She has run a number of strategic litigation cases on behalf of children and newborns held in Australia’s immigration detention centres,
including those detained on Nauru and Manus Island. She has also run litigation focused specifically on the inadequate medical care men, women and children have received in Australia’s immigration detention network.Katie also has experience advocating for the rights of refugees in the community, humanitarian and political sectors. Over the past decade she has also represented clients from diverse backgrounds including victims of war crimes, Aboriginal clients living in remote communities and victims of corporate misconduct and asbestos disease. Katie’s international experience includes working at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia as part of a legal team representing victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Bio: Shukufa Tahiri is a Policy Officer with the Refugee Council of Australia. Her work involves policy analysis, research and advocacy on issues affecting people seeking asylum and
refugees. She is the secretariat for Refugee Communities Advocacy Network, a refugee led organisation that aims to embed grassroot refugee voices in policy decision-making and
public discourse. She is also one of the executive directors of Akademos Society that helps fund the education of girls, youth and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Amnesty International Australia recognised her as one of the 15 women championing human rights in Australia in 2017. The Australian Financial Review also recently named her as one of 2018’s 100 women of influence in Australia.
Bio: David Mejia-Canales is a community lawyer who works to turn our system of laws into a system of justice, particularly for those most impacted by injustice. David was the main author of 'Something for them: Meeting the support needs of LGBT young people who are recently arrived, refugees or asylum seekers'. The report focused on understanding and addressing the experiences and needs of queer young refugees and asylum seekers in Australia.

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terrible sound