Supporting Indigenous Lawyers
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IMPACT CONTENTS Rebuilding after a natural disaster .............................................5 Helping the homeless have a voice ............................................8 Protecting a natural wonder .......................................................12 Carbon offset projects that benefit communities ...............14 Turning lives around ......................................................................18 Helping asylum seekers navigate the law ..............................20 Aunty’s house ..................................................................................22 Spreading the magic of books across PNG.............................23 Securing protection for LGBTI asylum seekers......................24 Challenging disadvantage in Vietnam ....................................25 Supporting Indigenous lawyers .................................................26 Preserving unique wetlands for future generations ..........28 Speaking up for those who can’t speak out .........................31 Mentoring programs making a difference .............................34 Opening a window into the corporate world........................37 2016 highlights ...............................................................................38 2016 gallery .....................................................................................40 Committee members ....................................................................42 WHAT IS IMPACT? Working with the community to bring about change and improve the lives of others, to protect the environment and to close the gap between Indigenous and non‑Indigenous Australians. FOREWORD We believe that we have a responsibility to use our skills to help others in the community. I’m proud to lead a firm where so many people devote time to work with inspirational organisations and people on community initiatives and pro bono matters. We focus our effort on four areas where we believe we can have the greatest impact: alleviating disadvantage, protecting the environment, promoting reconciliation and providing access to justice. The stories in this issue shine a light on some of the projects and initiatives in which we have played a role this year. We are proud to work alongside many of the wonderful organisations helping to make a difference. Enjoy reading Impact. Richard Spurio Managing Partner 3 Photo courtesy of IFRC © Yoshi Shimizu REBUILDING AFTER A NATURAL DISASTER If an earthquake, typhoon, tsunami or other natural disaster were to hit your home, forcing you to flee for your life, paperwork is likely to be the last thing on your mind. But when the clean‑up begins, and humanitarian agencies arrive to provide emergency shelter and, later, more permanent structures, that paperwork – or the ability to prove you have a right to live there – could prove vital to your ability to rebuild. Access to humanitarian assistance can be limited by housing, land and property issues including insecure land tenure, lack of tenure‑related documentation, residence in informal settlements, slums or areas deemed hazardous, lack of enforceable rental agreements, or indigenous modes of land ownership. To help alleviate these issues, lawyers across our offices and from our alliance partner Linklaters are working with the Australian Red Cross (ARC) on a ‘Disaster Law Housing, Land and Property Mapping Project’. Reports will be prepared for five countries identified by the ARC and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as priorities: Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, the Solomon Islands and Indonesia. The ARC will then condense these detailed legal reports into practical fact sheets and briefing notes, addressing regulatory barriers to post‑disaster shelter provision in a specific country. These factsheets will support humanitarian workers to better understand the legal landscape before arriving at the disaster scene, and while working on the ground during the recovery phase. Photo courtesy of IFRC © Joe Cropp When the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups ‘This project will ensure that these issues are better swing into action after a disaster strikes, they respond understood and that humanitarian workers and through nine organisational ‘clusters’ to provide international coordination systems are better placed to humanitarian assistance, including shelter, water, respond quickly and effectively by having a pre‑existing sanitation, health, education and protection. These analysis of key factors underpinning housing vulnerability.’ clusters work with governments, NGOs, private sector In the chaotic aftermath of a disaster, where buildings and organisations and local aid groups to coordinate an infrastructure have been destroyed or badly damaged, appropriate response, including organising emergency shelter is a priority. But there can be a raft of other issues shelter, providing health care and first aid, distributing to deal with beyond handing out tarpaulins and tools relief supplies, restoring safe water and sanitation to help with temporary accommodation. For example, facilities and reconnecting families. people who have lost their homes must provide ‘security IFRC is the co‑chair of the Shelter Cluster, the coordination of tenure’ or evidence of occupancy, as this can affect mechanism that supports people affected by natural someone’s ability to receive assistance or rebuild. disasters and internally displaced people in conflicts with ‘There is a particular vulnerability around the type and the means to live in safe, dignified and appropriate shelter. security of tenure and whether it’s recognised,’ Tom said. Information such as that currently being collected and ‘In urban areas, if a multi‑storey, multi‑tenanted building analysed by Allens is of critical importance to ensure that collapses, who do you help? The owner? The tenant? How regulatory barriers are identified and addressed, so that do you prove that you were living there when the building people who need shelter assistance get help faster and no longer exists? receive the right kind of support. ‘In rural areas, the Tom Bamforth, the Global Focal Point for Shelter issues are around Coordinator for the IFRC, said the project would help the documentation. Red Cross provide quicker, more effective shelter in the This doesn’t immediate aftermath of a disaster. always have to ‘We’ve always known that housing, land and property mean formal issues are of major importance in a natural disaster but land title or a vast we’ve never had anything pre‑existing to guide us. With archival exercise. no background to what those issues are in each country, We can interview we’ve always been very reactive and have to respond to the neighbours issues as they come up,’ he said. and if there are groups of neighbours who agree, then that is fine.’ Photo courtesy of IFRC © Ezekiel Simperingham IMPACT 6 Photo courtesy of IFRC © Carlo Heathcote Photo courtesy of IFRC Other groups of particular vulnerability include women > In urban areas, the right to assistance for households in (in some countries, women do not have the same legal collapsed multi‑occupancy high‑rise buildings is often rights to property as men), minority groups that may not restricted. Shelter response policy is often developed be documented or may be unwanted by the government, on the basis of one family, one home, which doesn’t undocumented refugee groups and groups who oppose reflect urban realities or patterns of tenure, especially the government. multi‑storey rental accommodation. Lawyer Rachel MacLeod, from Allens’ Melbourne office, There is a particular vulnerability continues to be instrumental in helping the Allens Pro Bono committee coordinate this project with the ARC. Our around the type and security Port Moresby, Perth and Brisbane offices are respectively of tenure and whether working on the PNG, Bangladesh and Solomon Islands it’s recognised. reports, while the Linklaters Indonesia office is compiling the Indonesia report. For the Tonga report, we have partnered with local lawyers. Tom outlined some specific examples of recent issues: ‘This project is a huge priority for the Red Cross, and the > The declaration of No Build Zones in the Philippines global humanitarian community,’ Rachel said. following cyclones Bopha (2012) and Haiyan (2013). The government declared wide swathes of the affected ‘Allens is delighted to be able to help. It’s a practical way to areas too dangerous to inhabit, restricting aid access to use our legal skills to do something concrete and tangible people living there and longer‑term recovery. to help countries in our region.’ > In Nepal, evidence of citizenship and land title was Both Tom and Rachel agreed that this project is being required in order to be eligible for government undertaken at an opportune time, as the growing reconstruction subsidies. This meant that many problems associated with climate change will exacerbate people, especially in urban areas, were ineligible for the potential for more natural disasters in our region. assistance owing to lack of proof of land tenure. There ‘There are clear signs of greater unpredictability in the were also significant inter‑generational non‑Nepali weather and greater intensity in the sorts of disasters minorities (Bhutanese, Bangladeshi), as well as remote we’re seeing. We’ve seen some of the most powerful mountainous Tibeto‑Burman communities who had no typhoons and cyclones ever in our region recently,’ formal, recorded citizenship. Tom said. > In the Pacific