In 2011 the Australian Human Rights Commission hosted a successful study tour undertaken by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in Australia. You can read about the some of the outcomes of that tour, including the AHRC Report, in a previous WRAP. Following on from that study tour, MCWH was extremely pleased to host the AHRC Melbourne Roundtable on ‘Working together to address issues affecting women from CALD backgrounds’, led by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and attended by many wonderful women representing organisations that support immigrant and refugee women across Melbourne and nationally including the National Ethnic Disability Alliance, Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights, Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre and Small Giants (pictured above).
The roundtable was a wonderful opportunity for women working in the field to share their expertise and experience and to identify existing opportunities to raise the national profile of migrant women’s concerns. MCWH would like to thank the Commissioner and her team for their initiative and looks forward to continued discussion about many of the issues raised, and further opportunities for migrant and refugee women’s increased visibility at a policy level.