Elizabeth Evatt - Human Rights Advocate

Human Rights Advocate

Evatt has been an outspoken advocate of issues relating to human rights in Australia, particularly women's rights. In a 2004 speech to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, Evatt critiqued the Act and other laws relating to women's rights in Australia, in terms of its inadequacies in satisfying Australia's obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. She was also critical of the then Howard Liberal government's anti-terrorism legislation, particularly provisions relating to control orders and preventive detention, saying that "These laws are striking at the most fundamental freedoms in our democracy in a most draconian way."

Evatt was a signatory to the Yogyakarta Principles in November 2006.

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