August 16, 2017
Devoy seeks UN backing on care scandal
Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy has told a United Nations Committee the practice of putting disproportionate numbers of Maori children and young people in state care was the beginning of the mass incarceration of Maori New Zealanders in state institutions.
Dame Susan is representing the NZ Human Rights Commission before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which monitors New Zealand's compliance with the UN convention.
She asked the committee to urge the New Zealand government to initiate an inquiry into the physical and sexual abuse of children and disabled people held in state institutions.
The overwhelming majority of children taken into care historically were Maori and it is still going on.
She says the refusal by successive governments to investigate is not only wrong, it is immoral.
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