The departure of Save the Children Australia from Nauru, means that the children incarcerated there have been left without a voice. The Australian government has granted the welfare contract to the multinational, Transfield Services. Transfield Services has received $1.5bn from the Australian federal government since being contracted in October 2012 to manage Australia’s detention centres Read more
Mohsen is late, but effusively apologetic as he sits down. “I can’t sleep at night for the nightmares,” he says. “In the dark I am back in that prison in my country,” – a middle-eastern country Guardian Australia has chosen not to name for fear of consequences for his family – “so instead I sleep Read more
Support for growing New Zealand’s refugee quota has been swelling over the last six months. Every week a new commentator sees the global refugee crisis and our tiny intake and agrees that New Zealanders must do our bit. One of the very few people to publicly oppose an increase in New Zealand’s refugee quota is Read more
Last Thursday, Human Rights Watch Australia published a report explaining that, despite two years of processing, very few detainees have left Australia’s Manus Island detention centre. The report is a fresh reminder that forced integration can throw up some wicked dilemmas, whether it is in Nauru or Australia’s other offshore resettlement facility on Manus Island, Read more
A campaign led by a Marist priest will see asylum seekers in Sydney given travel concession cards which will help them access services and support. Fr Jim Carty led a campaign by the Sydney Alliance to get the concession for newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers living in the community. For almost six months, members Read more
Twenty-three-year-old Rez Ricardo was born a refugee. Her Kurdish family had fled Iraq for Pakistan in the hope of receiving aid from the United Nations. Ms Ricardo was born three years after her family left Iraq and spent most of her life, until the age of 6, living in Pakistani refugee camps. The law student Read more
At his post-Cabinet news conference, on Monday John Key said he had been wrong and the numbers were much lower. Mr Key had repeated the claim several times that thousands and thousands of refugees make it into the country, despite the annual refugee quota being just 750. He said many more came in under the Read more
Weeks after Scott Morrison became immigration minister in September 2013, a 17-year-old Iraqi boy at the Manus Island detention centre alleged he was “on a list” of a group of Iranian men who planned to gang rape him. He was moved to another compound, but lived in fear at the camp until three months later, Read more
Over the last few months, I have been completing a Masters in International Criminal Law at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in Turin, Italy. Over the last two weeks, our classes revolved around human rights — always a bit of a cringeworthy topic when one comes from Australia. Cringeworthy, because Read more
Dubbed by some “the Guantanamo of the Pacific”, Manus Island is home to one of Australia’s off-shore detention centres, where around a thousand asylum seekers are locked up. Australia does not allow journalists to visit the centres but the BBC’s Jon Donnison travelled undercover to Papua New Guinea to reach the camp on Manus island. Read more