In western Melbourne, African-Australian mothers have been crying out for help for years.
They say their children have been singled out and vilified, leading to far too many ending up in jail, many with mental health problems.
Now their concerns have been endorsed by a United Nations task force investigating the experiences of people of African descent in communities around the world.
Following a visit to Australia earlier this month, the group found that the proportion of people of South Sudanese origin in prison and indefinite detention here is not matched in any other country to which they have resettled.
Dominique Day, a member of the working group, a US human rights lawyer, said she had never seen a situation like this in Australia.
“Personally, I’ve never come into a space and heard so much, so immediately, about suicide, depression and serious mental health issues,” Ms Day told ABC.
When the task force raised these issues with the federal Department of Health, they said they were unaware of the magnitude of the problem.
“We’re not necessarily talking about people who were necessarily prone to severe mental illness. [problems],” she said.
But rather people who have had a history of feeling disaffected and isolated that leads to identity crises and even suicidal ideation.
The preliminary report says Australian authorities should consider their role in the “poor outcomes” facing South Sudanese communities.
And it suggests a more community approach to supporting youth from new immigrant communities as a preventative tool.
“Otherwise, the international community should consider country-specific warnings for refugees prior to resettlement,” the report says.
Ms Day said the group had been told that people of African descent, and particularly South Sudanese, were overrepresented in juvenile detention and detention.
“You have section 501 of the Immigration Law, which allows the government to convert people at the end of their prison sentences to this indefinite detention in immigration custody,” he said.
“And this was also a space that was disproportionately black and South Sudanese.”
A spokesperson for the Australian Border Force told ABC in a statement that the visa cancellation powers helped protect the community.
“The Australian Government will continue to act decisively to protect the community from the risk of harm posed by people who choose to engage in criminal activity or other behavior of concern,” the spokesperson said.
They added that Australia had non-discriminatory visa and migration programs, and the conditions surrounding cancellations applied to everyone, regardless of gender, race or cultural background.
“The Department of the Interior’s network of Community Liaison Officers (CLOs) plays an essential role in building and maintaining relationships with a wide range of CALD communities across the country,” the spokesperson said.
“We came here for the future of our children”
The president of the Coalition of Sudanese Mothers in Victoria, Monica Majak, said she may not have resettled with her son in Australia if she had been warned about how they would be treated.
Ms. Majak said she had fled the war because of the promise of a better life that had not materialized.
“We came here for the future of our children. We came here for this generation that has been destroyed,” he told ABC.
“Their future has been ruined. They have no future at all because they take our children away from us.”
Ms Majak, who was among the Sudanese community members consulted by the UN task force, said Australian youth in South Sudan were being unfairly targeted by law enforcement and the media.
“I am an Australian citizen, and these children who came here and have all these problems, they are Australian, they see themselves as Australian,” she said.
“But they have been singled out by calling them gangs, calling them thieves.”
Ms. Majak said her own son was being held indefinitely at the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Center.
She had been struggling with this mental health before attempting to kill herself in 2017 by dousing herself with gasoline and attempting to set herself on fire.
He was arrested, and on the day he was due to be released on bond he was placed in immigration detention.
“I was waiting in court [thinking] my son is coming [but] my son didn’t come,” he said.
“They immediately canceled his visa and took him into custody.
“They just took him away with no information. They didn’t inform me. They didn’t tell me where they took him.”
Ms Majak, whose son is still in custody, sometimes wonders if she should have sought refuge in Australia and if the war could have been safer.
“We felt that when we were in the war, we didn’t face all these things,” he said.
“We ran here to protect our children, but if there is no solution, they can take us back.
“Because it doesn’t make sense to me to be alive in this country without my children.”
Australian African youth mental health crisis
The UN task force found that there was a lack of awareness in government bodies about the youth mental health crisis affecting African communities in Australia.
“We met with a lot of organizations, a lot of different types of government bodies, and this was not on anybody’s radar,” Day said.
“I wasn’t on the resettlement people’s radar. It was not on the radar of the Department of Health. It wasn’t even on the radar, necessarily the coroner’s.
“We were told that nationally sourced data is not necessarily captured in suicide data.”
Ms. Day said the government’s lack of awareness of the issues facing African communities was worrying.
“We saw teenagers saying, ‘I’m tired of going to my South Sudanese friends’ funerals,'” she said.
“We did not see any recognition [from the authorities] that the resettlement and reception that the refugees were receiving was so inadequate, that there were children or adolescents who committed suicide”.
A spokesman for the federal Department of Health said in a statement that there were “opportunities to improve the collection of ethnic data.”
Earlier this year, Minister for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles pledged to collect better data on ethnicity before the next census in 2026.
But the National Suicide and Self-harm Monitoring System does not yet include data on ethnicity or country of birth.
“However, culturally and linguistically diverse communities have been identified as a priority population group under the 2022 National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement and for data development work as part of the System,” a spokesperson said. from the Department of Health.
Melbourne clinical psychologist Nasalifya Namwinga works predominantly with patients of African origin.
Ms Namwinga is concerned about the lack of attention to mental health issues in African communities in Victoria and the lack of data collection.
There is a clear correlation between the [report’s] findings about lack of resources and being hypervisible, experiencing discrimination and racism, and poor mental health outcomes,” he said.
“You see things like an increased risk of suicidality, self-harm behaviors, that are not accounted for.
“We don’t talk about them… if they don’t tell us, we don’t exist.”
Ms Namwinga said that core services were not up to the needs of culturally diverse patients.
He had seen patients decide to pay out of pocket rather than get more affordable, but less culturally responsive care.
“We have a therapist directory of other diverse therapists or African therapists, and they all have a waiting list,” he said.
“It’s hard to find an African therapist who doesn’t have a waiting list at the moment, because people are tired of accessing services that don’t serve them. So they will wait.”
