Pacific Island vineyard workers thought coming to New Zealand would be a blessing, but after a season of low pay and broken promises they don’t think they will be back. They say the pay rates set out in the contracts they signed back in Vanuatu have been ignored, leaving them around $300 a week short Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Human rights’
River has more rights than the unborn say Family First
Thursday, March 23rd, 2017
Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill, which passed its third reading in Parliament last week, establishes a new legal framework for the river. Family First has taken the occasion as an opportunity to highlight the fact that the unborn child has no legal rights. They say the new law gives the Whanganui river Read more
Refugees left waiting by UN
Friday, August 5th, 2016
Refugees and migrants will have to wait for the United Nations (U.N.) to ratify a draft international agreement to help settle their plight. At present, more people are forcibly displaced from their homes than at any time since the Second World War ended. But their circumstances are so politically contentious that after days of intense Read more
Asylum seekers in Nauru subject to severe abuse
Friday, August 5th, 2016
About 1,200 men, women, and children who sought refuge in Australia and were forcibly transferred to Nauru have suffered severe abuse, inhumane treatment, and neglect, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Most of them have been held there for three years. They routinely face neglect by health workers and other service providers who Read more
Samoa Observer says sorry but complaints still laid with Ombudsman
Friday, June 24th, 2016
At least three formal complaints have been lodged with the Ombudsman’s office over the Samoa Observer newspaper’s front page treatment of a young transgender victim of suicide. There have been mixed reactions to the paper’s more personal apology published in the Samoa Observer on Tuesdayover the signature of the editor in chief Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa. Read more
Samoa newspaper uses trans-gender death to make a point
Tuesday, June 21st, 2016
Outrage has erupted in Samoa after a newspaper published a photograph of a dead trans-gender woman. The suspected cause of death is suicide. The 20-year-old computer student was a regular at the Catholic Church of Taufusi. She was discovered in a church hall on Friday morning local time. A photograph on the front page of Read more
Law reforms in Nauru: suicide, homosexuality decriminalised
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
The Nauru government has announced that the island’s Parliament this month passed a number of laws to bring the nation up to international human rights standards. A new act replaces a former criminal code that dated back to 1899 and was based on old Queensland laws. The law reforms come after a number of incidents at the Read more
Dissident priest released by Vietnam before Obama visit
Tuesday, May 24th, 2016
Just before a visit from President Obama, Vietnam released a political dissident priest who had spent much of the last two decades in jail or house arrest. Catholic Church officials announced that Fr Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly was released from jail on Friday morning, AFP reported. President Obama started a three-day visit to Vietnam on Read more
Sr. Dianna Ortiz, advocate for victims of human trafficking
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016
In 1989, while serving in Guatemala as a missionary in a Mayan community, Ursuline Sr. Dianna Ortiz was abducted and tortured by Guatemalan security forces. This trauma fuelled her passion for human rights work. Ortiz now serves as the editor of Education for Justice, a project of the Center of Concern. She also founded the Read more
Rising sea levels — only 160,000 people so who gives a damn?
Friday, March 11th, 2016
The Pacific Island nations often cited as the most likely to disappear because of rising sea levels include Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. Kiribati has a population of just over 100,000. The Marshall Islands about 52,000. And Tuvalu close to 10,000. The problem for small Pacific Island nations is that on a world scale Read more