Dr Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is the keynote speaker at the Australian Human Rights Commission’s conference: Free and Equal: An Australian Conversation on Human Rights, held in Sydney on 8 October 2019.
The Free and Equal conference is the centrepiece of a national conversation and once-in-a-decade event. It will take stock of themes emerging from Australian voices and allow civil society organisations to hear from human rights experts, industry and community leaders on how they can advance human rights into the 21st Century.
Dr Bachelet has long been a champion for human rights, beginning her activism during the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the early 1970s.
In 1975 Dr Bachelet was forced to flee Chile and seek refuge in Australia. While in Australia, Dr Bachelet and other Chilean women’s advocates marched for women’s rights and against human rights abuses under Pinochet.
The Free and Equal: An Australian Conversation on Human Rights conference will provide opportunities ahead for human rights protection in Australia, and discuss challenges such as how CSOs balance competing rights in a complex legal landscape, and how can they keep improving protections for vulnerable Australians.
The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Sydney on Tuesday October 8.