Associate Professor Jennifer Burn
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law
DipIMLib (UNSW), LLB (UNSW), BA (UNSW), GradDipLegPract (UTS), MA (Syd)
Email: Jennifer.Burn@uts.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9514 9662
Fax: +61 2 9514 9685
Room: CH01.03.11 (map)
Mailing address: PO Box 123,
Broadway NSW 2007,
Australia
Biography
Jennifer Burn teaches in Administrative Law as well as specialist electives associated with citizenship, immigration and social justice issues.
Since 2003 Jennifer has been Director of Anti-Slavery Australia. Anti-Slavery Australia is dedicated to eliminating all forms of trafficking and slavery through direct service and advocacy programs. Anti-Slavery Australia provides legal advice and representation to people who have experienced trafficking and slavery and advocates for changes to laws and policies to improve the protection of the rights of people who have been trafficked. As part of the legal practice work of Anti-Slavery Australia lawyers have direct experience of the impact of trafficking and slavery on trafficked people and have been able to use that knowledge to advocate for better legal and human rights practices and protections. Anti-Slavery Australia's focus has been to review the operation of immigration law, particularly the trafficking visa framework and associated social support administered by the Office for Women and the operation of the criminal law.
Following the first National Roundtable on People Trafficking in 2008, Anti-Slavery Australia participated in the research and writing of the guidelines for NGOs working with trafficked people and the companion ‘Know your Rights’ fact sheets for trafficked people, which has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese.
In 2008 Anti-Slavery Australia was awarded a grant of $250,000 from the federal Australian Attorney General’s Department to raise awareness of all forms of trafficking in Australia.
Current priorities include continued research into forced labour, forced marriage and servile marriage; the design and implementation of a range of trafficking awareness raising strategies; working with specific labour groups to promote awareness of labour rights and remedies; developing better strategic networks with the unions; focusing on compensation for trafficked people and continuing to work with communities to promote awareness of trafficking and slavery in Australia.
For more information on Anti-Slavery Australia please visit www.antislavery.org.au
Jennifer joined UTS:LAW full-time in 2002, after a 4-year, part-time association during which time she pioneered an entry-level Registered Migration Agents' course, in addition to teaching the undergraduate law subject Citizenship & Immigration Law. She had previously worked in a law practice specialising in immigration law and is general editor of the Immigration Review (LexisNexis).
In 2003, Jennifer also took up the position of Director of the University's Community Law Centre. She lead a review of the community role of that Centre, the opportunities it can provide for wider legal experience for students and the establishment of a new refereed journal, Public Space: The Journal of Law and Social Justice. The Community Law Centre closed in 2007.
In 2004, she was awarded the UTS Vice-Chancellor's Social Justice Medal for her anti-human trafficking work. In 2005 Jennifer was awarded the Law and Justice Foundation Justice Award for Community Legal Centres for her advocacy in the area of human trafficking. In 2009 Jennifer was highly commended for the Australian Human Rights Medal awarded by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Jennifer was presented with the Henry Giblett Award by the Migration Institute of Australia in 2009, in recognition of her outstanding contribution in the area of migration law education.
Teaching areas
• Immigration
• Human Rights
• Refugee and Humanitarian Law
Research
Research interests
• Jennifer Burn directs the Anti-Slavery Australia at UTS. Anti-Slavery Australia is dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and slavery in Australia. www.antislavery.org.au
• Administrative Law
• Citizenship and Nationality Law
• Human Trafficking
• Immigration Law
• Law Reform
Research supervision: Yes
Available for undergraduate, postgraduate coursework and higher degree research supervision in:
• Administrative Law
• Citizenship and Nationality Law
• Human Trafficking and Migrant Worker Exploitation
• Immigration Law
• Law Reform
Projects
Selected Peer-Assessed Projects
The Admission and Exclusion of Asylum Seekers: The Search for Legitimate Parameters
Publications
Book chapters
Rubenstein, K. & Burn, J.M. 2007, 'El regimen juridico de la immigracion en Australia' in Argullol Murgadas, Enric (eds), Immigracion y transformacion social en Cataluna, Fundacion BBVA, Spain, pp. 63-104.
View/Download from: UTSePress
Refereed journal articles
Simmons, F.H. & Burn, J.M. 2010, 'Evaluating Australia's Response to all forms of Trafficking: Towards Rights-centered Reform', The Australian Law Journal, vol. 84, no. 10, pp. 712-730.
View/Download from: UTSePress
View description>>
The 2009 US Trafficking in Persons Report predicted that the global financial crisis would increase the supply and demand for all forms of human trafficking, including trafficking for labour exploitation. 2 While Australia's initial response to trafficking focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation, there is now a growing focus on trafficking for labour exploitation outside the sex industry. 3 A decade after the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime: Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) 4 was adopted by the United Nations, is an opportune moment to assess how well Australian laws address the complex phenomena of human trafficking. The question this article focuses upon is do anti-trafficking laws fully reflect Australia's international obligations to prohibit all forms of trafficking and can Australia improve the ability of trafficked people to access remedies within and beyond the criminal justice system? This article assesses the trafficking and slavery offences in the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) (Criminal Code) against Australia's international obligations. After observing that the Criminal Code does not contain specific offences of forced labour or forced marriage, the authors propose a review of Australia's anti-trafficking laws. The review should consider how to improve the protection of therights of trafficked people, including the opportunity to seek compensation. The authors conclude by observing that trafficking for labour exploitation exists at the extreme end of a continuum of exploitation
Blay, S., Burn, J.M. & Keyzer, P. 2007, 'Interception and Offshore Processing of Asylum Seekers: The International Law Dimensions', UTS Law Review, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 7-25.
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For decades the international community has conducted a delicate and politically charged balancing act trying to reconcile the inexorable increase in refugees-and the need to find permanent homes for them with the fundamental right of all countries to have secure frontiers. While the notion of non-refoulement remains fundamental to the treatment of asylum seekers, their rights vis A vis the states in which they seek asylum are significantly circumscribed by their alien status. States have a right to control entry to their territories. In the development of asylum law and policy, the central difficulty for states, and indeed the international community, is how to construct an appropriate balance between the urgent humanitarian demands to protect those who are genuinely in need of asylum, and the exclusion of those who do not qualify for humanitarian protection.
Burn, J.M. & Simmons, F.H. 2006, 'Trafficking and Slavery in Australia: An evaluation of victim support strategies', Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 553-570.
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Burn, J.M., Blay, S., Simmon, F. 2005, 'Combating Human Trafficking: Australia's Response to Modern Day Slavery', The Australian Law Journal, vol. 79, no. 9, pp. 543-552.
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