University of Queensland Senior Lecturer and clinical educator Bridget Burton is working to support the next generation of human rights lawyers.
This week (1-10 December) is Human Rights Week which will culminate on Human Rights Day, and this year’s theme is All Humans are Born Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights.
With nearly 20 years of legal experience, Bridget reflects on the theme of this Human Rights Day.
What sparked your interest in human rights?
“We often make decisions about career direction when we’re young. And as a teenager, I was motivated by life experiences and what I had been exposed to. I grew up between Aotearoa New Zealand where I’m from, and remote parts of the Northern Territory. I’d seen a lot of injustice, and also had seen the role advocacy can play in challenging those injustices.
“That’s what set me in the direction of law in the first place. I always wanted to work in human rights, before I even decided that I was going to be a lawyer. It came first, law came second.”
So why did you decide to become a member of the QLS HR and Public Law Committee?
“I’ve been on that committee since it began, which was around the time that the Queensland brought in the Human Rights Act in 2019.
“Committees are an opportunity to work with people from different legal backgrounds to, elevate the work that you’re doing or to broaden your capacity to influence the direction of policy.”
This year’s Human Rights Day theme is all humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Can you tell me what this means for you and what advances are being made in the sector for this cause?
“I think that it’s an interesting theme because it comes at a time where there’s a lot of push back on human rights.
“I saw that in Aotearoa in the last couple of weeks with 50,000 people marching on the parliament for te Tiriti (the Treaty). And here in Queensland, we have the Truth Telling and Healing Inquiry being shut down. Internationally too, it’s a difficult time for human rights.
The Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry in Brisbane
earlier this year.
“So, as a theme that takes you back to basics, it’s probably good timing. Even for basic human rights like equality, times are tough. People have lost a sense of nuance around what equality means for historically marginalised or disadvantaged cohorts. We have these very formal senses of equality in that everybody gets the same.
“It’s also unfortunate times for dignity. We talk about dignity all the time, but we probably don’t think about it as deeply as we do think about rights.
“And when you’re thinking about dignity, I think it’s important to also recognize the flipside of that, which is the corrosive effect of traumatic humiliation. which happens in the criminal justice system, the child protection system and other domains.”
As you said there is a difference between rights and dignity. For a lot of people, they’d think if we get rights up, then dignities comes with it. How do you explain why that may not necessarily equate or what the fight is there?
“I think rights is often in a conflict scenario, it’s often incident based or momentary or in this environment, whereas dignity is a bigger picture about what it means to be human and to treat other people humanely.
“When you’re in a policy environment, dignity is probably a better driver than the idea of rights because it helps you to understand a person as a whole, and their life and experience as a whole. I think about it for the kids that are in the criminal justice system and the treatment that they get in the watch houses, I mean, that’s incredibly dehumanising … and undignified and inhumane.”
So in saying that, furthering that cause, from your perspective, what do you think needs to be done in terms of getting this chat started?
“It’s not the chats. The political shifts that we’ve seen on human rights over the last few years is a choice. It’s not a choice that’s made in ignorance of the reality. We have decisions being made that are cruel and inconsistent with people’s rights, because people have chosen to do that.
“I would love to see a return to principled, values-based approaches, in particular from politicians.
“I also think there does need to be better education around not so much that end of things but around what equality means, and what it means to deliver equality over a sustained period of time in a diverse community.
“Because real equality requires you to do things differently for different people. And that’s, I think, where people get lost. And if you take the Queensland truth telling and healing inquiry, that’s an equality measure to address ongoing inequity. It’s terrible to see that shut down just ahead of Human Rights Day.”
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