UN torture committee also to be told of nonconsensual ‘sex normalising’ surgery of intersex babies and children
The forced sterilisation of people with disability and the nonconsensual genital “normalisation” of intersex babies and children in Australia are being brought to the United Nations torture committee.
People With Disability Australia (PWDA) are campaigning for a royal commission into the incidence, forms and circumstances of exploitation, violence and abuse of people with a disability in the community in Australia. A 52-page submission to the UN details legislative failures in Australia which it says make forms of torture legal.
Forced, involuntary or coerced sterilisation of people with disability, particularly women and girls with disability and people with intersex variation, is an ongoing practice in Australia, the submission says. It also noted the involuntary or coerced treatment of infants and children with intersex variations in the form of “sex normalising” surgery in Australia.
Legislation varies from state to state and though there are some protections in certain states against the forced sterilisation of children, there is no law in Australia which explicitly prohibits it.
Last year the Senate community affairs committee found “very incomplete” data was kept in Australia on forced sterilisations of people with a disability and had only “indicative” figures.
According to the committee, 47 applications to sterilise people with disabilities were approved by tribunals or courts over the past 10 years in Australia, excluding the ACT and Victoria.
The ACT keeps very rigorous data and recorded 12 sterilisations in the 21 years to 2013.
Twenty-two applications across Australia were dismissed in the decade.
Victoria had 102 applications to sterilise people with disabilities in six-and-a-half years but did not keep data on how many were approved, how many dismissed and how many withdrawn.
The ongoing practice of nontherapeutic sterilisation has been identified as a form of torture by the UN special rapporteur on torture and as a form of violence by the UN committee on the rights of the child (CRC), and though both have previously made recommendations to Australia to stop it, they have only been partially take up by successive governments.
“People with disability in Australia are frequently subject to treatment that may constitute torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including persistent and severe violence and abuse, forced or coerced nontherapeutic sterilisation, long-term neglect of basic human needs, and painful and degrading behaviour modification techniques or restrictive practices,” PWDA says.
The submission also lists breaches of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), including the denial of reasonable accommodation.
“People with disability in Australia represent the most detained sector of our population; disproportionality prevalent in our prisons, institutionalised within our communities, and hospitalised in psychiatric wards,” PWDA says.
“Unaddressed and wide-ranging systemic failures in our criminal justice and disability service systems facilitate conditions that give rise to ill-treatment of people with disability. This is compounded by guardianship and mental health laws which deny legal capacity and provide a gateway through which further abusive practices can occur.”
PWDA specifically cite forced or coerced nontherapeutic sterilisation, solitary confinement and involuntary psychiatric treatment as examples of the torture of people with disabilities in Australia.
The forced drugging of people with disabilities as well as nonconsensual medical experimentation are also detailed in the submission, with Victoria having the highest rates of forced community psychiatric treatment in the world.
“The compulsory treatment of people with disability in the form of an involuntary treatment order (ITO), supervised treatment order (STO) or community treatment order (CTO) is authorised by mental health laws in all states and territories in Australia. Individuals who refuse compulsory treatment may be detained. Involuntary detention under Australian mental health laws gives rise to an ‘authority to treat’, except in Tasmania where the Guardianship Tribunals or the statutory ‘person responsible’ has responsibility for determining an order for treatment,” the submission says.
Victoria and the ACT are the only jurisdictions in Australia which have legislated against medical or scientific experiment on people without their full, free and informed consent.
“Many people with disability are particularly susceptible to being chemically restrained and administered medication in combinations that may pose a risk to their physical and mental health or cause actual bodily harm, particularly people who live in residential aged care settings,” PWDA says.
“There are limited protections from abuse of medication regimes and a lack of criminal offences concerning the maladministration of medications to control and manage behaviour.”
The UN committee against torture is holding hearings in Geneva this month and a contingent of people from Australia’s disability advocacy groups is travelling to Switzerland to make representations to the committee.
The submission has been endorsed by the First Peoples Disability Network, the Multicultural Disability Advocacy Association, Organisation Intersex International Australia, People with Disabilities ACT, Queensland Advocacy Incorporated and Women With Disabilities Australia.