RACISM IS NO JOKE – Join the campaign!

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

A campaign by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission and the Office of Ethnic Communities launching this week

More details at www.facebook.com/NoJokeNZ

Commenting on the campaign in a Facebook post, Labour MP Michael Wood said, “New Zealand has done so well through the period of Covid-19 – but this is an issue we have to address. It is deeply concerning that we have had an increase in racist attacks over this period, and sadly I have had a number of reports of this happening locally. New Zealand’s diversity is a strength and it is both ignorant and wrong to lash out and blame people from different cultures when something goes wrong. It’s great that the New Zealand Human Rights Commission is launching this campaign but we all have a responsibility to step up when we witness racism, support the person under attack, educate the attacker if safe to do so, and report if necessary.”

-TIN Bureau

New foreign nationals package inadequate

A new package to help foreign nationals stuck in New Zealand due to COVID-19 is inadequate and needs to be supplemented with the emergency benefit, say Community Law Centres O Aotearoa (CLCA) and the Human Rights Commission (HRC). The assistance programme began this month but the CLCA and the HRC are urging the Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni to provide temporary migrants with emergency benefits, as the welfare situation of at least 20,000 migrants becomes increasingly dire. “We predict that more than 30% of the fund [12 week $37.6m programme] will be spent on administrative costs to assess the complex and restrictive eligibility requirements,” says CLCA Chief Executive, Sue Moroney. Both Community Law and the Human Rights Commission wrote to the Minister early in the COVID-19 crisis, urging her to grant emergency benefits to migrants. She has declined to do so. Moroney said “this is precisely the situation that this provision of the Social Security Act 2018 was designed for”.

Government must listen to Muslim community about the attack on Christchurch Mosques

The Government must listen to the Muslim community to rectify its failure to act in the past, says the Human Rights Commission. The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ) submission to the Royal Commission of Inquiry was released this week. Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon said the IWCNZ submission details shortcomings by government and several public entities when exercising their duties and obligations. Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt said IWCNZ’s submission was a timely reminder that the human rights responsibilities of the public service need to be briefly and explicitly recognised in new public service legislation. The Public Service Legislation Bill is before the Committee of the House. IWCNZ’s submission calls for government to take a human rights approach to policy development stating: “If a human rights approach had been adopted by the Departments with whom IWCNZ was engaging, it is likely there would have been very different outcomes in the delivery of the respective and much-needed public services to the Muslim community.”