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Thank you, Madam Chair 

I make this statement as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, on behalf of the ºÚÁÏÇ鱨վ.

I acknowledge and thank the Expert Mechanism Members and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for making the time to visit Australia recently.

The Commission endorses CEDAW General Recommendation 39 - its first General Recommendation on the rights of Indigenous women and girls.

This was an important milestone which highlights:

• Promotion of the individual and collective rights of Indigenous women and girls, and affirmation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an authoritative framework to interpret CEDAW obligations; and
• Acknowledgement of the history and ongoing impacts of racism, dispossession, forced displacement, and violence on Indigenous women, including through the over-representation of child removal which compromises rather than builds the foundations of our families;
• The General Recommendation also acknowledges the gender-based violence faced by Indigenous women and girls as a form of discrimination under CEDAW. This is a particularly important issue in Australia where:
  • the Parliamentary Report on Missing and Murdered Women and ºÚÁÏÇ鱨վ, highlights the disproportionate exposure of Indigenous women to violence;
  • instances of injustice against our women are significantly under-represented by the mainstream media, and
  • misidentification of women as perpetrators is contributing to our women representing the highest growing prison population in the country. 

In 2021 the Commission provided a submission to the CEDAW on the rights of Indigenous women and girls highlighting the Commission’s Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices) Project—a multi-year initiative funded by the Australian Government and led by former Social Justice Commissioner, June Oscar AO—as a model for elevating the voices of First Nations women and girls.

A key principle of Wiyi Yani U Thangani is that women hold communities together. When measures are designed to enhance the enjoyment of human rights by First Nations women and girls, entire communities benefit. 

The project has provided a platform for First Nations women and girls in Australia to be heard as a collective, many of whose voices are often excluded and ignored. As a result, First Nations women and girls around Australia have been using Wiyi Yani U Thangani as a tool to organise and represent themselves effectively and to demand action from governments.

Just over a year ago, the former Commissioner launched the Wiyi Yani U Thangani First Nations Gender Justice Institute at the Australian National University, to ensure that this important work continues.

I want to acknowledge the representatives of the Institute participating in this session of the Permanent Forum and to express how proud the Commission is to have been a part of making June’s vision a reality.

The Wiyi Yani U Thangani Project has demonstrated the valuable role NHRIs can play as incubators. By leading human rights-based initiatives and supporting them to grow outwards - the impact of work can be multiplied into the future.

Thank you.