Can We Really Outsource our Human Rights Obligations?

A friend asked me last week whether there was a viable alternative to offshore detention for refugees who have committed a crime. It’s a fair question, but sadly one that has, for many Australians, now unfairly cast a pall on attitudes towards all refugees.

This week we will have the opportunity to hear one of Fremantle’s champions of human rights speak at the Fremantle Library. Associate Professor Mary Anne Kenny from the School of Law and Criminology at Murdoch University, is a legal practitioner and researcher whose life’s work has focused on refugees. Mary Anne and her colleague Lisa Van Tor’s recent article in The Conversation brilliantly explained the current controversy and ethics around the Federal Government’s decision to deport three non-citizens from the NZYQ group to Nauru. People in this group had committed a crime, done their time, then placed in indefinite detention. They were released into the community after a High Court decision in November 2023.

More broadly though, Australia’s outsourcing of refugees began many years ago. Thousands of forgotten refugees continue to suffer in Indonesia from the fall out of Tony Abbot’s Operation Sovereign Borders which began in 2013.

I have taught English to many refugees here who fled the trauma of war, famine or persecution and were now building a decent life in Australia. During Covid, I started teaching online with refugees in Indonesia. These were young Afghani Hazara men who had escaped the threat of the rise of the Taliban in 2013. As a persecuted minority in their country, these boys were particularly at risk from the brutality of the Taliban. They were teenagers when they left Afghanistan unaccompanied, hoping to reach Australia. Instead they were incarcerated in Indonesia in appalling conditions for a number of years. Now in their twenties, they live impoverished lives in the community or in all male accommodation provided by the International Organization for Migration.

Indonesia is not a signatory to The United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention which outlines minimum standards for the treatment of refugees to ensure a dignified life. Although these people are documented refugees they are not permitted to work or engage in formal education. I was shocked to realize that our neighbour Indonesia continues to host over 12,000 people in this situation; about half of those are from Afghanistan and 30 percent are children.

In the current geopolitical climate there are more displaced people than ever before and there are no simple solutions to this crisis. However, as a wealthy country with obligations under international law, shouldn’t we have a deep unease about effectively warehousing people in poorer countries? Do the consciences of ordinary citizens count?

In her lecture, Mary Anne Kenny will explore why community involvement in these and other big issues of our time actually matters.

You can register here for Mary Anne Kenny’s talk this Thursday, 6 March at 6.00 pm in the Fremantle Library at the Walyalup Covid Centre.

* By Pauline Pannell, Grandmothers for Refugees Fremantle