Throwing Out the Lifelines
In New Zealand, Human Rights have never been protected by a single constitutional document nor any serious piece of legislation. Instead, we’ve had a raft of dissimilar laws, policies and programmes providing only elements of protection. It’s not good enough!
To me, it’s a continual and serious government (past and present) failure then that no single department or agency has sole or been tasked with the primary responsibility for the promotion and protection of those rights.
Mental health promotion may be defined as “the process of enhancing the capacity of individuals and communities to take control over their lives and to improve their mental health. It uses strategies that foster supportive environments and individual resilience, while showing respect for culture, equity, social justice and personal dignity.”
In Kate Raue’s case it’s policy writing at it’s shallow best. There are aspects of Kate’s ‘improper detainment’ that disturb me deeply, occasions when I firmly believe that her most basic of human rights were trampled over with such a blatant disregard that we ought to be totally incensed. I am. Personal dignity? Social justice? Kate should be so lucky!
Bill of Rights
I suppose it’s not surprising really when you have a toothless Bill of Rights and a Parliament that gets away with passing legislation that’s inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act more often than not. According to the Minister of Justice, “Since the Bill of Rights was enacted, the government has, on average, ignored one section 7 report a year. A section 7 report is a legal opinion given by the Attorney General to Parliament that the proposed legislation breaches fundamental rights in an unjustified way.”
Elsewhere, a major report card ‘Human Rights in New Zealand 2010’ released by the Human Rights Commission in December last year, highlights their priority areas that involve a major focus on economic, social and cultural rights, covering: health, education, equal employment opportunities, social security and housing.
Structural Discrimination
The blanket description of covering health doesn’t cut it with me. Mental Health must be expressly named. It must NOT be allowed to fall between the cracks. In Kate’s case, it was easy enough to hide such tramplings. You simply bury them beneath structural discrimination that looks for all the world like you have the person’s best interests at heart. What’s structural discrimination?
Contextually, it’s the use of activities in an institution that make it easy to enforce their practices (whether they are true or not to the philosophical model) and may lead to an entrenchment of inequalities. Insidious acts of removal and limitation: of calls from family or friends or actual contact and ‘professional report’ that couch everything a person might say in clinical jargon that’s sufficient to suggest delusion.
The Bottomline
I categorically question the principles, values, behaviours and practices of the ‘team’ at Rangipapa as they relate to Katherine Raue but then they can hardly be kept accountable when we have no International Human Rights framework and nor do we incorporate a specific reference to equality in our Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act.
Where there are supportive laws and policies here in New Zealand, “the extent to which people enjoy their human rights in their everyday lives DEPENDS on the extent to which those they come in contact with whether: family members, whanau, neighbours, friends, work colleagues, service providers or government officials, reflect basic human rights principles and values in their behaviour and practices.” That last bit, that there is the bottomline.
RELATED POSTS
1. An Anchor in the Social World 2. Rights of Passage 3. Katherine 4. Ships in the Night 5. Alone Alone All All Alone 6. Systems that take the Kate 7. Model Citizen: A Piece of Kate 8. A Twist of Kate: The Castaway 9. Throwing Out the Lifelines
