Protecting Refugee Children's Rights Matters to Mary Crock

bjbj Mary Crock: There are still children who are facing long periods of detention, in circumstances that really are in breach of many human rights. Super: What are you working on? Mary Crock: Small Mercies, Big Futures is a project that looks at the experiences and treatment of children presenting as refugees in three situations. In the camps overseas, where they re chosen for resettlement to Australia. During the asylum process, where they have to go through refugee status determination, where they are sometimes subject to detention and finally also looking at their settlement in Australia, when they become permanent residents and then finally citizens of this country. The problem with children when they present as refugees - unless they re travelling by themselves, in which case their vulnerabilities are patent, they re very obvious - very often I think the problem is that children are missed. We just don t think enough of them. Super: What inspired you to work in this area? Mary Crock: I helped to set up the first legal service in Victoria, specialising in immigration and refugee law and it was during that period where we had boats arriving and there were forty children born in detention over a period of about four years and I just began writing about what was happening and became so, I don t know, exercised by the injustices of what was happening that it sort of lead me into academia and it s gone from there. Super: What does the future hold? Mary Crock: I think my biggest challenge is to cut through the sound bytes, all the hype that is generated around boats and around this and that, to try and get people to think clearly and compassionately about a difficult issue. I actually think Australia has a huge future and that if we can get over the politics of this, we really can clean our act up and be a world leader. That s what I want to see us become, but we have a way to go. gdHT [Content_Types].xml Iw}, $yi} _rels/.rels theme/theme/themeManager.xml sQ}# theme/theme/theme1.xml w toc'v )I`n 3Vq%'#q :\TZaG L+M2 e\O* $*c? )6-r IqbJ#x ,AGm T[XF64 E)`# R>QD =(K& =al- 4vfa 0%M0 theme/theme/_rels/themeManager.xml.rels 6?$Q K(M&$R(.1 [Content_Types].xmlPK _rels/.relsPK theme/theme/themeManager.xmlPK theme/theme/theme1.xmlPK theme/theme/_rels/themeManager.xml.relsPK ALABS Normal ALABS Microsoft Office Word University of Sydney Title Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8