Media: The women taking Australia’s most toxic site to the United Nations

The fight to clean up Wittenoom’s asbestos has reached the United Nations, after a Banjima Traditional Owner and Australian documentary filmmaker travelled to Geneva to bring attention to the legal case.

Johnnell Parker, a Banjima Traditional Owner, and Yaara Bou Melhem, the director and producer of Yurlu | Country, spoke at an official UN event last week, calling for the remediation of the the Wittenoom contamination on Banjima Country in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

Wittenoom is the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere. The area was contaminated by decades of asbestos mining, leaving Aboriginal people in Western Australia with the highest rate of mesothelioma deaths in the world. It is linked to more than 4,000 deaths, according to the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia.

Last month, the traditional owners of an area launched a $1.5 billion legal claim against the Western Australian government over the asbestos contamination and its ongoing impacts on First Nations people. Wittenoom is located about 1,400 kilometres north-east of Perth.

Bou Melhem and Parker took part in an official UN Side Event at the 61st Regular Session of the Human Rights Council, speaking about the injustices of the contamination.