Community Housing Industry Association Media Release

An additional 2,090 homes housing more than 4,000 young people experiencing homelessness could be built by drawing on $1 billion already set aside by the Commonwealth, according to new modelling that will be presented to federal politicians in Canberra today.

The money was allocated last year to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) during negotiations between the Greens and the Government over legislation to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Modelling conducted by Professor Laurence Troy, of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute is based on constructing two bedroom dwellings based on building costs in Melbourne’s inner east and the NSW mid north coast. It assumes a 60/40 split between metro and regional areas with the units occupied by tenants paying rent set to a maximum of 25% of their income plus any Commonwealth Rent Assistance they may be eligible for. The analysis highlights the investment can also include developments of congregate and core and cluster housing.

An analysis released last week of the most recent Specialist Homelessness Services data, revealed 37,872 children and young people approached homelessness services alone for assistance in 2022/23, including 9,232 children aged 15-17. Even after assistance from homelessness services, 44% of children and young people 15-24 were still homeless.

“Our system for supporting young people experiencing homelessness is fundamentally broken,” said Wendy Hayhurst, CEO of the Community Housing Industry Association. “But with $1 billion ready to be deployed we can almost immediately start turning sods and building the homes young people need. Community Housing providers are ready to help, we just need the political and financial commitment.

Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia said the youth homelessness crisis would not be resolved without expanding dedicated housing. “Children should not be sleeping rough in Australia, but that is the reality. The funds that are already set aside will not fix the youth homelessness crisis but they will make a solid start on delivering the homes needed. We need to get moving on this immediately.”

Shorna Moore, from youth homelessness provider, Melbourne City Mission said “Every day we see teenagers and children escaping violence, homophobia or neglect. But we can’t get them safe homes because there simply isn’t enough housing or support to help everyone who walks through the door.”

By Jane Salmon

Palm Sunday rallies bring together Jew and Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, many varieties of Christian, humanists and atheists to share a vision of ecumenical cooperation and tolerance.

The rallies traditionally promote human rights and equity while also condemning war. Thinkers, believers and visionaries speak to each topic all over the country.

Sydney’s rally today was no exception. Josephite Sister Susan Connelly had plenty to say about the monetary drivers of military expansion. “Christ”, claimed Connelly, “would not be impressed by corporate or political greed”. Money lenders in the temple got mentioned. She emphasised the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem on a humble donkey rather than the high horse of imperial or even colonial victors.

Humanitarian leader and national
soccer veteran Craig Foster spoke about the importance of reconciling our nation’s history with our beliefs and political actions before we can look to a truly harmonious future. He mentioned the referendum with regret.

Mr Foster said Australia could yet become a model of multi-cultural diversity and acceptance for the whole world.

Foster mentioned that prolonged detention ordeals are based on a tissue-thin rulings or bits of legislation that can be changed with the stroke of a pen. There is one tiny step or key between prolonged suffering and relative liberty. Foster witnessed such a transformational moment when Manus detainee Farhad Bandesh stepped past a formerly locked gate after 8 years of various types of imprisonment. The moment features in the film “Freedom is Beautiful”.

Palm Sunday refugee rallies happening around the country today.

Emphasising the right to seek asylum, the Refugee Convention, those still without permanence, Medevac refugees living month to month, and the importance of acknowledging recent progress and continuing reform. pic.twitter.com/0cOZUUAm1Y

— Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) March 24, 2024

Offshore ordeals and turnbacks of the past 13 years continue on Nauru and in PNG. Foster crisply mentioned that denial of permanent residency for 11,000 more refugees constrains real freedom still.

Temporary visa conditions include limited work and study options, disrupted Medicare, fear of deportation, legal double standards, lack of family reunion, reduced financial credit and the absence of a clear way forward.

The joy of seeing Tamil walker Neil Para get not only work rights but the chance to host his ageing parents for a few months is proof of the momentous power of Permanent Visas. That the Para children can also aspire to work and higher learning is a great relief.

The national tendency to blame migrants for all our woes was also mentioned by Foster today. Scapegoating and inundation narratives seem heightened when asylum seekers come by boat.

Preventing drowning at sea is as simple as providing humanitarian aid to Rohingyans in squalid refugee camps where people struggle to manage on less than US 27 cents per day. The option of offering regional processing pathways for prospective Australians (to prevent the resort to maritime travel) is too often ignored.

Any refugees escaping from especially harsh regimes who broke our laws were given not only a jail sentence but then an extra, indefinite period of debilitating (rather than rehabilitative) immigration detention. Double jeopardy.

Now there is political outcry that a handful of these possibly-less-than-perfect people may be freed by High Court rulings. Ooher. This beat-up completely obscures the great things many thousands of other refugees have done while working through Covid as essential employees, taxpayers, volunteers, bringers of fresh skills, insights, culture and experience.

It is disproportionate. Only today, some Palm Sunday refugee speakers first gave blood in Melbourne. I doubt many politicians have the stamina or stomach for that.

Medical, anti-AUKUS, Arab, spiritual, whistleblower, anti corruption, refugees in Indonesia or PNG and other themes were represented today.

The Palm Sunday rally kilometres walked in capitals and regional centres around the country will be added to the distances walkers for logged for The Big Walk 4 Refugees. This means that fit refugees and their supporters have lapped Australia’s circumference 4 times. They are literally running rings around reflexive fear mongering politicians.

On Tuesday 26th, some of those refugees with lived experience, will go to Canberra to explain the reason for their participation.

It is, as Foster says, up to Federal Government to take the next, not-so-big step and grant permanent visas to all who have been living here long term.

Is the stroke of a pen so very strenuous?

Photo by Zebedee Parkes (via Facebook)

Photo by Zebedee Parkes (via Facebook)

The Refugee Advocacy Network

About the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice and Peace – Melbourne, 24 March 2024

Since 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network, has brought together a wide range of groups to plan the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees.

During the 1970s and 80s there was a tradition of holding Peace rallies on Palm Sunday. This dropped off sometime in the late 80s. In 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network (RAN), working together with various groups in Melbourne, including Refugee Action Collective (RAC), established the Melbourne Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees. Since then, the Walk has been held each year on Palm Sunday, except for 2020, when an online event was held due to the Covid pandemic. Around 20 Palm Sunday events in support of refugee rights are now held each year in capital cities and regional towns right across Australia, with a level of co-ordination through the Australian Refugee Action Network (ARAN).

The Melbourne, the Walk for Justice for Refugees is planned each year with a Planning Committee with representatives from faith groups, RAC, other local advocacy and support groups for refugees. Refugee communities also contribute to planning for Palm Sunday. The main aim of the Walk for Justice is to reach out to groups and individuals who may not be routinely engaged advocacy activities, but who are none the less concerned about the way Australian policies have impacted refugees.

It is often claimed that Australia is generous in supporting refuges – and this is largely true in relation to the support provided to humanitarian refugees – people who are selected by Australia from refugee camps and offered refugee protection visas. However, as we have seen in the last 2 decades, Australia has developed a very punitive response to those who have the ‘audacity’ to travel to Australia undocumented (without official entry papers) to seek asylum. While most people who seek asylum in Australia arrive by air, those who arrive by boat are subjected to a very harsh regime, which is intended to deter people from taking boat journeys from Indonesia and similar places to seek asylum here. The domestic political debate about people who travel by boat to seek asylum has been consistently toxic, with the return of the Howard Government in late 2001 attributed largely to the fear of terrorism post September 11, and the rhetoric about strong borders, which was code for rejecting people who seek asylum here.

Our advocacy platform seeks to holds to account the punitive policy response of our Australian Government over those who seek asylum that problematises people and their means of arrival, rather than the circumstances causing their dispossession and forced migration.

The key issues which have been the focus of most Palm Sunday Walk events have been temporary visas which deny the permanent resettlement in Australia, indefinite detention, the establishment of offshore processing in PNG and Nauru, and the situation for refugees in Indonesia with no resettlement options. This year our main focus is on calling for permanent visas for around 10,000 people who have been living here for over 10 years on bridging visas and have been denied a fair process for through assessment of their claims for refugee status. The Walk for Justice is promoted on social media and through a wide network of around 100 supporting groups and organisations.

The program includes a select few speakers, including people with lived experience who have been impacted by the policies.

The program will commence at 10.30am with readings on peace and justice from several faith traditions. There will be a brief musical interlude between speakers. This will be followed by a young Palestinian who will sing ‘Change is a Comin’, followed by:

• Dr Tania Miletic, Assistant Director, Peacebuilding Initiative, University of Melbourne
• 3 refugee speakers, including a Palestinian refugee, and 2 people who are struggling in a visa limbo; one of the women did the walk to Canberra last year, alongside 21 other women from Melbourne.
• Other speakers are Sr Brigid (founder and coordinator, Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project – established in 2000 BASP has assisted thousands of families and individuals) and David Manne (long time Director of Refugee legal, and tireless advocate for Refugees and people seeking asylum.

In addition to the speaking program, we include music (often by refugees), this year including the TARAB Ensemble, a young Palestinian signer, a famous Ethiopian musician, and a Hazara asylum seeker.

This year we have been open to a change in format in response to the significance of, and public support for the Free Palestine Rally. We continue to be open to changes to the format of the Palm Sunday rally as many who attend may want to continue to the Free Palestine rally. Our common goal to support refugees in this country and outside of it.

In February 2023 the Albanese Government announced that all refugees who had been granted SHEV or TPV would be granted visas.

In late 2023 it was the immense frustration of living the last 10 years in limbo that motivated 22 women to make the gruelling trek on foot from Melbourne, 15 women from Sydney, and a young man to cycle from Brisbane to make their case – to tell politicians that it’s time to end the limbo and allow people to get on with building their lives in Australia.

More than 10 years after arriving here to find a safe future around 10,000 people still have no certainty. Many of these people have not seen their children, parents or spouses who remain in danger in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Myanmar. They cannot go back, and Australia has given them no certainty of a future here. All of these people have been subject to the so-called Fast Track assessment process – which is clearly not fast and is deeply flawed as it does not provide for thorough assessment of claims for refugee status.

These people are living on short term Bridging Visas, and some are refused the right to work. Without any income many families are totally reliant on charities, which are stretched to capacity. Many young people have completed their schooling here and are being blocked from continuing in higher education – some are denied the right to enrol, while those who can enrol are unable to pay international student fees.

Palm Sunday is a National Day of Action for Refugee Rights: “We call on the Albanese Government to establish a fair and just system for assessing refugee claims. All those who have been living here in limbo for more than 10 years should have the right to settle here with the security of a permanent visa.”

Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) Media Release

The Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), the peak body for humanitarian and development organisations, welcomes the Australian Government’s announcement to reinstate the funding of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

“This decision is overdue given the urgency of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and UNRWA’s lifesaving support amongst a population currently on the brink of famine,” said ACFID chief executive Marc Purcell.

“Children are already dying of starvation on the world’s watch. Parachuting aid is not a solution. Five civilians have already died in trying to reach air drops in Gaza, and the aid is only reached by those who are fit and able to do so. Women, children, elderly and people with disability are left behind, those who are sick, injured and starving will not receive this relief.

“It is essential that the Australian Government redoubles its efforts to ensure aid convoys can enter Gaza safely via land. We call on the Australian Government to urge that aid convoys and humanitarian workers are not targeted further by the Israeli defence forces as they seek to assist civilians.”

It has been almost three weeks since the Director of UNRWA in Gaza warned the Australian Government of UNRWA’s pending collapse without donors reinstating their funding. This would have meant the collapse of the entire humanitarian response.

“ACFID has actively advocated for UNRWA’s funding to be reinstated since its suspension, recognizing the vital backbone that UNRWA is in providing the humanitarian response in Gaza and across the region,” said Mr Purcell.

Since the allegations arose, UNRWA actively responded, including with the dismissal of staff alleged to have been involved in the October 7 attack.

Over 31,000 people have now died in Gaza since October 7, thousands more are injured or missing, and more than a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are estimated to be facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.

ACFID welcomes the additional funding of $4 million to UNICEF and calls on the Australian Government to continue considering further ongoing funding for the humanitarian response in Gaza, the West Bank & the region, including to Australian NGOs providing crucial and lifesaving assistance.

ACFID continues to call for the Australian Government to publicly advocate for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to prevent further loss of life in Gaza.

A new report reveals a growing crisis of women and children fleeing domestic and family violence into homelessness prompting calls for an urgent funding package to provide pathways to safe housing.

Homelessness Australia’s Homelessness and domestic and family violence: State of Response Report for International Women’s Day analyses Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data to find 45 per cent of women and girls seeking homelessness assistance do so due to family and domestic violence.

It finds that over the last decade:

• the number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car at the end of homelessness support more than doubled, from 1,041 to 2,428
• the number of women and children couch surfing at the end of support more than doubled from 3,465 to 7,214.

And in the past year alone, the number of women and children sleeping rough or in a car after receiving homelessness support increased by 23%.

The report notes that lack of access to safe housing prevents many women from escaping violence and pushes women back to violent homes. The last Personal Safety Survey revealed that more than 20,000 women experiencing violence wanted to leave but were unable to because of a lack of money or financial support, and more than 13,000 women said lack of money or having nowhere to go was the reason they returned to violence.

Homelessness Australia proposes the Federal Government deliver a suite of measures to address the problem in the imminent National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, including increasing homelessness support, investing more in Safe at Home programs, increasing Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) and delivering more social housing.

Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia, said: “Thousands of Australian women are faced with an impossible choice – return to a violent home or confront homelessness. This is not a decision anyone should be forced to make, yet it’s happening more and more.

“Pathways to safe housing are the missing piece in the Government’s response to family violence, but can be addressed in the soon to be released five-year National Housing and Homelessness Agreement.

“This International Women’s Day it would be refreshing to see real action to fix a desperate, parlous situation that puts the lives and safety of too many women and girls at risk.

“Australia is a wealthy, sophisticated nation. We can and must do better.”

Jocelyn Bignold OAM, CEO of McAuley Community Services for Women said: “Every day we work with women who have suffered trauma in a violent relationship who then suffer more when they become trapped in homelessness. With the right early intervention supports many women would never become homeless and could safely remain in their home.”

Plan International Australia Media Release

New research by Plan International Australia, released as the world marks International Women’s Day has revealed that awareness of how gender inequality manifests in some of the most devastating ways in Australia – and in more vulnerable contexts overseas – is alarmingly low.

Almost half of Australians (47%) surveyed in Plan International Australia’s Gender Compass research said they do not believe that physical and non-physical violence against women is extremely common.

Violence against women is a serious and widespread problem in Australia – with two in five Australian women having experienced violence firsthand since the age of 15. On average, one woman is killed a week in Australia by a former or current partner, according to Our Watch.

And despite women being the most over represented group when it comes to homelessness – only 45% of Australians surveyed in the Gender Compass believe this to be true.

Only 2 in 10 (21%) of Australians are aware that medical research in Australia has studied men’s health more than women’s.

Almost six in 10 Australians think we have, in fact, already achieved gender equality in Australia.

These new statistics are being released today in a second installment of Plan International Australia’s groundbreaking Gender Compass research: a first of its kind study revealing what ordinary Australians really think about gender equality.

The UN theme for this year’s IWD is “Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress” – with the day set aside in this year’s UN calendar to “examine the pathways to greater economic inclusion for women and girls everywhere.”

However, when it comes to how inequality plays out in the workplace and politics, the Gender Compass findings on gender equality awareness revealed that:

• Almost four in 10 (37%) Australians aren’t aware that there is a gender pay gap in Australia.
• More than a third of people (34%) were not aware that senior positions in business/industry in Australia are dominated by men
• Around the same amount (34%) do not believe that women do the bulk of unpaid labour in households.
• Close to half of Australians (48%) do not agree that women are typically underrepresented in politics.

“Our Gender Compass findings highlight the importance of moments like International Women’s Day in continuing to drive critical awareness and action towards gender equality. We need to have conversations about gender equality with Australians in a way that they can understand to make a difference. The impacts and negative effects of gender inequality are invisible to too many Australians,” said Plan International Australia CEO Susanne Legena.

With the Australian Government today releasing the country’s first ever strategy for gender equality, alongside its second annual Status of Women Report Card, now is a critical time to accelerate progress on gender quality.

As one of Australia’s leading humanitarian and girls’ rights organisations, Plan International Australia works to build a world where we are all equal. Together with research, civil society and philanthropic partners, Plan International Australia developed Gender Compass to reveal the prevailing views on gender equality, who holds them, and what drives them. The hope is that this will lead to more targeted and effective communications and advocacy efforts by individuals and organisations working to advance gender equality everywhere – particularly in more vulnerable countries overseas, where progress on gender equality is even more fractured.

Aseel, a 22-year-old Palestinian young woman that Plan International supports said that on International Women’s Day, she is calling for a future where every young person was safe, where women and children were not the target of wars and conflict, and where all children, and especially girls, have access to an equal education.

“The right to an education is sacred. No schools should ever be bombed, no teacher should ever be the target of attacks. No war should make children miss a whole school year, or go hungry and cold,” she said.

“The world is getting hotter, conflicts are erupting at a rate we haven’t witnessed in generations and extreme poverty is on the rise – and the risks of gender-based violence are only heightened during crises like these,” added Ms Legena.

“In Sudan, UN estimates state 4.2 million girls and women are at risk of gender-based violence with that expected to increase to 6.9 million this year. Right now in Gaza, women and girls are being killed and injured in unprecedented and unspeakable ways. The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 30,000 people in five months – more than 70 per cent of them women and children. Two years on since conflict escalated in Ukraine, gender-based violence has sky-rocketed. In Haiti, which has just declared a state of emergency, a new Plan International study found increased incidents of rape and child early and forced marriage amongst adolescent girls.

“For girls around the world, who were already disproportionately affected by these issues and held back because of their gender, there is so much at stake. The fear of physical, sexual, and emotional violence is inescapable. We cannot look away,” she said.

“Current projections indicate that the next five generations of girls and women will never see gender equality. Everyone should be alarmed by this. We need to do better. This International Women’s Day, we want to see a future where girls can live without fear of violence and discrimination. We must come together to beat the clock on gender inequality, until we are all equal in this world.”

Oxfam Australia Media Release

Gaza farmers’ two-month-long “golden time” of agricultural production has been destroyed by Israel’s military bombing and sealing of northern Gaza, ruining the enclave’s richest farmlands which are one of its biggest sources of fruit and vegetables.

With Israel’s actions also severely restricting humanitarian aid, the loss of local agricultural production is worsening malnutrition and hunger, leading to starvation and fears of worst to come for the 300,000 people estimated still now living in northern Gaza.

“The risk of genocide is increasing in northern Gaza because the Government of Israel is ignoring one of the key provisions of the International Court of Justice, to provide urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” said Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa director. Israel reported privately to the ICJ Monday.

Oxfam’s partner organisation, the Palestinian Agricultural Development Association (PARC) – one of the biggest local organisations focused on agricultural support – estimates that nearly a quarter of northern Gaza’s farm holdings were completely destroyed by Israel forces, which razed greenhouses and buildings and 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleets in the initial days of bombings and incursion.

PARC Director of Operations in Gaza, Hani Al Ramlawi, told Oxfam yesterday that “these next two months should be the golden time of production. However, if farms haven’t already been destroyed then they have been made impossible to access, because any farmer trying to do so will be directly targeted by Israel forces. And without water, and without electricity farmland means nothing.”

Malnutrition is rife and there are reports of death by starvation. Oxfam partners talk of people drinking toilet water, eating wild plants, using animal fodder to make bread, and they speak about “catastrophic hunger” and their fear of famine without some breakthrough in access, aid and security. “You cannot imagine these conditions,” Al Ramlawi said.

Juzoor, another Oxfam partner and one of the few organisations still operating in northern Gaza, reports similar fears about rising malnutrition and hunger. It introduced a vaccine program last month in the 13 shelters where it operates and also did nutritional screenings of 1,700 children there.

Juzoor Director, Dr Umaiyeh Khammash, told Oxfam yesterday that they found out that 13% of the children they measured there are acutely malnourished. Among them, around 55 to 60 children (3%) were suffering from severe wasting and underweight.

“This is a life-threatening condition,” Khammash said. “They need to be managed in an advanced setup, a hospital or specific feeding program, none of which exist now in northern Gaza. If they are not going to receive proper management and supplementation immediately, in the coming days or weeks, those children are going to die.”

There are perhaps 300,000 civilians still in northern Gaza who have been almost entirely cut off for four months and, according to Al Ramlawi, “left behind from an international humanitarian response that has pledged never to leave anyone behind”, he said.

“The landscape is complete destruction, The farmers, the people, the animals have nothing. The minimum requirements to stay alive do not exist in North Gaza.”

Palestinians in Gaza depend on local agriculture not just for their food but also their livelihoods. The sector is worth over $575m a year, Al Ramlawi said, and that the loss of crops for both sustenance and income “not only exacerbates the already dire humanitarian situation but will have severe long-term impacts”.

“This crisis will lead to the overall collapse of Gaza’s agriculture for many years to come.”

PARC is still managing to deliver some aid locally, last week “we found a trader to provide warm clothes and other winterisation assets for around 100,000 people,” Al Ramlawi said. “Food prices are crazy, most of the people in North Gaza cannot buy commodities. A kilo of flour has gone from five shekels to 180 – who can buy this?” He said the cost of providing a humanitarian food parcel was now three times more expensive in northern Gaza to procure than in Rafah, and at less quality.

“How many days, hours, seconds, do we need to wait to provide those people with the services and aid they need? Do we need to lose all the people in north Gaza? What are we waiting for? We need to convince the world to care about this issue,” he said.

Leading homelessness advocates and unions have united in a joint push for state and federal housing ministers to plug a $73 million funding black hole that threatens to worsen the homelessness crisis by jeopardising the future of 700 critical support jobs, as ministers meet today.

Homelessness services are overwhelmed by surging demand as the nation faces its worst housing crisis in living memory.

Each day homelessness services are forced to turn away 295 people due to a lack of resources. New analysis of the most recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data reveals the number of children sleeping rough, even after seeking homelessness assistance, has surged 20 per cent.

Homelessness Australia calculates an additional $450 million is needed to meet demand for homelessness support. Despite surging demand, services are staring down the barrel of funding cuts. A $73 million funding black hole exists because funding previously provided to meet the costs of the Equal Remuneration Order (ERO) expires in June 2024.

The joint letter outlines the severe consequences if the $73 million funding shortfall is not fixed. “If the funding cut proceeds, homelessness service capacity will be slashed by more than 700 homelessness workers nationally, supercharging pressure on an already overwhelmed homelessness system,” the letter reads.

Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia, said the uncertainty was playing havoc with Australia’s response to the crisis. “The reality on the ground is heartbreaking. Every day, families and children are left without a roof over their heads, sleeping in cars or worse. This is not just a funding issue. It’s a human crisis that demands compassion and commitment.”

The letter notes findings from a recent survey of 252 workers in frontline homelessness support services, showing the emotional toll of having to turn people away. Concerningly, 56 per cent of respondents rated the emotional impact at the maximum score of ten, with 84 per cent highlighting the detrimental effects of potential funding cuts.

“Workers in this sector are confronted by extremely difficult choices already, like picking between a mother and child fleeing violence or a teenager without a home. The last thing they need is uncertainty about their job or that of their colleague,” Colvin said.

Negotiations on homelessness funding over the next five years from July 2024 are set to take place at the Housing and Homelessness Ministerial Council meeting today.

Signatories to the letter, including Homelessness Australia, the Australian Services Union, Community Housing Industry Association, and ACOSS, are urging an immediate guarantee that funding will not be cut. They are also calling for plans to increase service capacity to meet the demand from Australians facing homelessness.

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association Media Release

Oxfam Australia Media Release

Oxfam, together with 19 other aid organisations, is deeply concerned and outraged that some of the largest donors have suspended funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main aid provider for millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the region. The aid cuts come amid a rapidly worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children, who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza.

We welcome UNRWA’s swift investigation into the alleged involvement of a small number of UN staff members in the October 7th attacks. We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job. This decision comes as the International Court of Justice ordered immediate and effective action to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

152 UNRWA staff have already been killed and 145 UNRWA facilities damaged by bombardment. UNRWA is the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza and their delivery of humanitarian assistance cannot be replaced by other agencies working in Gaza. If the funding suspensions are not reversed we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza.

With approximately over one million displaced Palestinians taking shelter in or around 154 UNRWA shelters, the agency and aid organisations have continued to work in near-impossible circumstances to provide food, vaccinations, and fresh water. The countries suspending funds risk further depriving Palestinians in the region of essential food, water, medical assistance and supplies, education, and protection.

We urge donor states to reaffirm support for the vital work that UNRWA and its partners do to help Palestinians survive one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our times. Countries must reverse these funding suspensions, uphold their duties towards the Palestinian people and scale up humanitarian assistance for civilians in dire need in Gaza and the region.

Signatory organisations:

War Child Alliance

ActionAid

Norwegian Refugee Council

Diakonia

Oxfam

Première Urgence Internationale

Médecins du Monde France, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Germany
Danish Refugee Council

Johanniter International Assistance

The Association of International Development Agencies – Aida

Humanity & Inclusion/ Handicap International (HI)

INTERSOS

CCFD-Terre Solidaire

International Council for Voluntary Agencies

Norwegian People’s Aid

Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine

Norwegian Church Aid

DanChurchAid

American Friends Service Committee

Caritas Internationalis

Save the Children

HOW MANY of us Survivors of CSA have to kill ourselves before the following short paragraph is seriously considered by Churches and Government?

Too much secular Government/Taxpayer money is wasted on religious endeavours in Australia, and too many Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse experienced in religious institutions are left clinging to life by their fingernails because the money to deliver quality psychotherapy help to them is simply not there.

I have been prompted to write all of these following words by an excellent piece that was recently published on The AIMN.

(TRIGGER WARNING: A Torrent of Truth, and matters relating to Childhood Sexual Abuse and Suicide are about to follow.)

The psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who have been treating me over the last three years first met a largely untreated mind that wanted to kill itself. As you will soon see suicide ideation is a hard grip-beast to escape.

Sometimes … when I write … I do not know if it is the traumatised me, the autistic me, or just me who pulls words from my brain. I’m glad my brain box is incapable of feeling the words of self-pity because from what I have been told thoughts like that are unhelpful darkness anchors and serve no positive purpose.

When I write I pick up a word camera and take a snapshot of what my brain is saying in that moment. At the same time I am thought-looking at other CSA Survivors and wondering what their word cameras see and feel and whether or not they are being acknowledged and listened to.

I do not always write like this. Sometimes fear rules and I try to appear together and unaffected by my childhood experiences, and so I’ll self-censor and try to mirror the way other people write. Sometimes I can do that reasonably successfully. Sometimes, like right now, I tell fear to sit in the corner for a bit and I write the words that want to happen.

Bear in mind that I live in a State, Qld, where some free help of a very light nature is available for older Survivors of CSA like me. Because I tried to kill myself on a number of occasions I was offered in-depth psychotherapy assistance over the course of a year.

Three months ago, on my 72nd birthday, I spent another period in the acute mental health ward of Sunshine Coast University Hospital on suicide watch. I’m sick of such things, they really give me the shits. I’m sick of the fact that people like me, and there are far too many like me out there, have to beg for ongoing quality help when taxpayer dollars are sheeted into Chaplaincy Programs in secular state schools and unneeded government dollars are poured into wealthy private religious schools.

Feeling sorry for myself is a long-term no go and I will not let it happen. Feeling rising anger over these funding matters is a different matter and it makes me want to fucking roar.

I can write brutally about Survivor life and people sometimes react with shock horror at the ugly truths I seek to expose, but do you realise a lot of other Survivors simply nod their heads in quiet acknowledgement? Yep, been there and lived that.

So let’s chat about something that I know is not unique to me.

Yesterday, Thursday, was a day where who I am and reality spent some time together. It was a meeting I did not want to attend, and it was a meeting where I thought some of the content was a bit shitty.

Normally, but what is normal, I front up as a very quiet friendly man who is very considered with his words. I present as reasonably intelligent but a bit closed off and obviously a long-term resident of Shy City … for all I know that perhaps simply evidences me as sitting in one of the available templates of what an older Survivor of CSA can be.

I like to present as a person who writes clearly about difficult CSA issues whether they be experienced by me or others. The one thing I have struggled with is the shame of being a Survivor. That shame stops me from letting you get to know me.

Fuck the fear of judgement. Some of you know me as a person who now and then posts to AIMN on various matters. While that is part of me it is not who or what I am. What follows is just a chat about how yesterday was for me. As you read remember that I have at least received a bit of treatment and I would like you to think about those Survivors who cannot access any quality treatment at all.

The last three years of suicide attempts, and all the subsequent psychiatric assessments and periods spent in acute mental wards, plus the quality help I have received, plus all the years of living that I have done, all coalesced yesterday when my referral to the MyAgedCare system finally happened.

It hurt my pride to receive that referral.

It hurt my pride to be seen as internally frail and damaged. It hurt my pride to have to accept some truths that others perceive about me.

You know, my lower scale autism tangents my brain all the time into ‘hey let’s jump over there and pursue those thought words into their own warren of hidden possibilities’. Did you know that some of the traits of early childhood trauma can closely mirror some of the traits of what used to be called Aspergers? I cannot read faces, I cannot pick up on non-verbal cues. They are some of those traits.

My pride. My bloody pride.

To the people who mean a lot to me I am going to speak. I have hidden who I am from my friends, from my close friends, from my closest friend, and from my children. Years ago, decades ago, almost my full lifetime ago, I learned a way to mask the pain of my childhood abuse and I cobbled together a method that I hoped would help me to appear to be normal.

I was unable to release that masking for most of my life. Recently I’ve received quality mental health help and, this is me. At the risk of losing any friendship now at this time in my life I am going to be who I am. I have to stop shame of self and I want you to know this man who writes of many things, sometimes in strange or from left-field directions.

I have received some help. Others cannot access any help at all.

I was referred to MyAgedCare in the present by mental health professionals because I was seen to have been flat out developmentally arrested in some areas by my childhood abuse experiences … I was jumped on young and re-jumped on while still young by Catholics for the next seven years … so I dipped out on a couple of key early learnings apparently … and I can write a sentence like this and feel nothing in my brain … no self sympathy or other such emotional space wasters.

Now that brings up an interesting thought word jumble. If a Survivor of CSA never learned to self care, and also carries that strongly imposed Survivor of CSA belief that one possesses no self value whatsoever … do those two things combined save that Survivor from falling into a need to sympathy suck? Who knows?

But back to being arrested by a crime I did not commit. That arresting did not affect my intelligence. In life I managed to run a newspaper, I managed to set up and run not-for-profit groups. The bummer blip was the part where I never learned how to self care, or how to socialise in a comfortable manner. I have received some help, the dollars that could help others are wasted on Chaplaincy Programs in secular state schools.

The case worker yesterday was a delight of empathy and information. Association with strong female partners in my life insulated me from the knowledge that some of the most basic things in life were beyond my comprehension or capability.

Strong independent women who kitchen-claim, and why should they not if they wish to, can quite unknowingly/accidently/completely without blame/not as a misson in life/ and as an unintended consequence protect a man from discovering that, in some basic areas of responsible self care, he is utterly bloody clueless. I only started to understand that when I started to live alone.

People are coming to see me once Xmas is over to teach me how to cook. To teach me how to shop in such a way that there is food consistently in the house. To teach me that eating is a good thing even when I don’t care about it. To help me understand that routines like house work and self care are not impositions.

It hurts my pride. Perhaps there are others out there who’d be happy wear a bit of hurt pride if some help dollars were there for them. The help dollars are not there for them.

A person is coming in the new year of 2024 to teach me how to use small talk in social situations. To teach me to try to see the non-verbal facial cues that people use to convey happiness, boredom, annoyance, joy, or anger. To teach me to stop fearing people who have done nothing more than approach me to say hello. To teach me that just observing life is only part of the deal and that a thing called participation also exists.

What hurt have I caused to others, close others, by not being able to say hello this is who I am? I’ve received some help to enable myself to ask such questions. Others get no help at all.

The strength of the masking that fear can create is undeniable. Until recently nobody knew the autistic traits I carry, or the level of CSA damage I carry. The shitty shame of it all always shut me down at the wrong moments in my life when better options of more openness briefly appeared. Well good on me blah blah for developing some understanding of such things. I’ve had some help but others have had none at fucking all because the religious mobs have hoovered up too many of the available bloody dollars.

One moment out of yesterday almost broke me. Bureaucracy claims a bit of skin whenever it can … in order to get a MyAgedCare Number I was speaker-phoned through a series of questions by a pleasant enough person. Because I didn’t fit the usual tick and flick box of physical frailty and a need for home or ambulatory aids the questions quickly became forensic. My case manager tried to intervene but I was asked to detail as fully as I could the causes of my inner frailty.

To have to summarize crappy childhood horror in such an impersonal bureaucratic setting as that just to get a Number broke the dam in my heart. I thought the dam walls had been psychotherapy strengthened. The tears were like fucking battery acid. And I’ve had some help and others just as deserving as me have had no help at all.

I got my Number. I will get the help I need. The empathy from my case manager saved yesterday. How come many of the others who are like me receive no help at all? I am getting this help because the professionals who are treating me want me to choose to stay in this life. They are worried I will make the wrong choice.

The help I get helps me to err on the safer side of what can prove to be terminally bad choices. How can the other Survivors like me do that very same thing without receiving that very same solid help?

How many Survivors of CSA of any age who experienced abuse in religious institutions have to kill themselves before adequate numbers of therapy dollars are finally placed on the table?

Oxfam Australia Media Release

Oxfam reaction to the IPC food security figures for Gaza

In reaction to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report published today on Gaza warning of a risk of famine if intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persist or worsen, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director, said:

“Gaza’s shocking descent into starvation was so predictable as to be premeditated; an ongoing war crime by the Government of Israel.

“This is irrefutable proof that Israel’s attacks have decimated Gaza’s already fragile food system so catastrophically that most people are no longer able to feed themselves and their families. People are being starved in Gaza. Unless there is an immediate ceasefire and a massive scale-up of humanitarian aid, Gaza risks being pushed into a famine.

“It is abhorrent and barely conceivable in 2023, that women, children and babies, the elderly and sick, the most vulnerable people have had their food weaponised against them. The horror felt by a mother unable to feed her child is the horror of Gaza today.

“While over 90 per cent of people in Gaza cannot find their next meal, some UN Security Council member states are still toying with words rather than voting for a ceasefire.

“Those within the international community who have refused to rein in Israel’s military machine and its collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza today stand shamed and complicit – this scandal is on your watch. You must no longer patronise this Israeli aggression that is killing so many civilians, even as it fails in its own terms by sowing the seeds of future insecurity for both Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Refugee Action Coalition Media Release

Inaction by the Australian government is leaving refugee families destitute. Despite promises from the PNG Immigration minister that the problem would be fixed, refugees still have no food vouchers, income, or access to medical help.

Families have run out of food for their children; refugees have been left without electricity because they do not have the money to keep it connected. Electricity in Port Moresby costs up to $150 a week. Even drinking water has to be bought.

Some money has been raised by friends and supporters in Australia, for the last week, but it is nowhere near enough to buy sufficient food and keep the power on for the 62 refugees and their families still in limbo in PNG. Despite efforts to raise more money, there is no money to even provide food vouchers for this coming week.

While no refugees have been evicted, service providers have still not been paid by PNG Immigration, and the threat made in a letter last week remains. One of the refugee families was told by the CEO of their accommodation provider, MRT, to “move out” and added, “I can close all the accommodation anytime.”

“Clare O’Neil must urgently provide the money needed to guarantee that refugees have the services that they need to survive. There are two new babies to be supported,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, “We know there have been meetings between Home Affairs and PNG Immigration, but nothing has come of them.”

While PNG and Australia argue the toss about who is responsible for the refugees’ welfare, service providers are not being paid and refugees in PNG are facing increasingly desperate circumstances.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Rintoul, “Labor is spending over $400 million to keep Nauru open as an offshore detention facility. But they have found nothing to support the refugees they sent there in 2013.”