tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/nauru-files-30338/articlesNauru files – The Conversation2023-03-24T13:11:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2017902023-03-24T13:11:46Z2023-03-24T13:11:46Z‘A toxic policy with little returns’ – lessons for the UK-Rwanda deal from Australia and the US<p>One afternoon in mid-June, I sat with Ethan*, a local islander, at Nauru’s boat harbour. He was speaking about how life had changed in the country since the asylum deal with Australia was agreed. Just a few years before my arrival in 2016, the small Pacific island had once again been financed to process the asylum claims of migrants attempting to reach Australia. If successful, refugees would be resettled locally around the island. Successive Australian governments had taken a tough zero-tolerance approach, making sure that anyone making their way by boat without documentation would <a href="https://osb.homeaffairs.gov.au/">“never settle in Australia”</a>.</p>
<p>Not far from where we sat, placards covered the fence of a refugee resettlement compound, reading: “We’re refugees not criminals,” and “Freedom is a Right Not a Crime, We Want Justice.”</p>
<p>“The thing is none of them want to be here,” Ethan explained, “and we don’t know who these people are, they could be dangerous. Why else does Australia not want them?” These fears were echoed to me numerous times in Nauru. “I’m so worried about having the refugee children in our school,” Sandra, a teacher at Nauru’s only secondary school, said on another occasion. “We don’t want to touch or go too close in case they say we hit refugees. And natural things like kids pushing each other on the playground. The next day it’s in the Australian news”. This teacher’s fears were confirmed several months later, with <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-09/nauru-govt-denies-abuse-of-refugee-school-children/7234772">headlines</a> like: “Nauru Government Denies Refugee Children Are Abused in Schools.”</p>
<p>Such accusations of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">savagery against refugees</a> draw on colonial tropes of Pacific islanders as cannibals. Major global media outlets alleged that Nauru was a veritable heart of darkness, an <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa12/4934/2016/en/">“island of despair”</a>, where refugees are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/08/11/489584342/claims-probed-of-brutal-conditions-for-refugees-on-island-of-nauru">“hacked with machetes”</a> by the local population.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A video released by the Australian government explaining its “zero chance” asylum and immigration policy.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These sorts of representations created a fractious context locally: one produced by sending asylum seekers, many with devastating pasts, to a vastly different region of the world from their intended destination.</p>
<h2>The UK Rwanda policy</h2>
<p>In January 2023, the UK’s High Court <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64024461">ruled on</a> the lawfulness of the British government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Under this £140 million agreement, undocumented migrants could find themselves sent to the East African country – 4,000 miles south-east of where they lodged their asylum applications. Once in Rwanda, they will have their asylum claims processed, and will be eligible for residency, not in the UK – their original destination – but in Rwanda.</p>
<p>The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jun/15/what-is-the-echr-and-how-did-it-intervene-in-uk-rwanda-flight-plans">expected to rule</a> on the controversial policy by the end of the year. This proposed “outsourced” asylum policy directly mimics Australia’s so-called “Pacific Solution”, the impacts of which I have examined in <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765841/asylum-and-extraction-in-the-republic-of-nauru/#bookTabs=1">my research</a>. Since Australia’s Liberal prime minister, John Howard, at the turn of the century, boat arrivals have been the basis for copious media attention and resultant public anxiety in Australia. Controversial offshore policies in small Pacific islands like Nauru, combined with high-profile military and naval operations, are intended to reduce the number of people crossing the Indian Ocean.</p>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>Now, like successive Australian politicians, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is promoting the UK-Rwanda policy as a means of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/08/stop-the-boats-sunaks-anti-asylum-slogan-echoes-australia-harsh-policy?mc_cid=045ba1c77c&mc_eid=7906bcbf06">“stopping the boats”</a>, but this time those crossing the English Channel from northern France. Just as Australian politicians stoked public anxiety, pursuing media attention and electoral gains, Suella Braverman, the UK home secretary, has called migrant boats from Calais <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEt8FVXIgvQ">“an invasion on our southern coast”</a>. She also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/rwanda-dream-could-still-become-a-nightmare-for-suella-braverman">said</a>: “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”</p>
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<p>I conducted <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765841/asylum-and-extraction-in-the-republic-of-nauru/">long-term fieldwork</a> in Nauru into the effects of the Australian government’s near <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/6/">AU$10 billion</a> (about £5 billion) arrangement. I have also led anthropological fieldwork projects into similar outsourced asylum measures in regions as diverse as Guatemala, Jordan and Lebanon. What falls outside the global media headlines, from all sides of the political spectrum, is how these policies are realised in practice and whether or not they actually work.</p>
<p>I have interviewed migrants claiming asylum, as well as local residents, private security contractors and government officials. I found that these outsourcing schemes create a refugee industry economy that local populations become dependant on. For the asylum seekers and refugees, most with devastating pasts and equally hazy futures, being castigated to far off places not of their choosing <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/NauruandManusRPCs/Report">all too often</a> led to tragic instances of self-harm and suicide. In Nauru, the friction between different populations were apparent on a daily basis.</p>
<h2>Australia’s ‘Nauru experiment’</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Republic of Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
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<p>The boat harbour is a popular spot for Nauruans and refugees alike. It is one of the few places where you can swim safely without the threats of currents or the jagged limestone pinnacles that pierce through the island’s coastal waters. It is also a place where I have long conversations with asylum seekers down from the island’s Regional Processing Centres (RPCs). The RPCs are tucked deep in the heart of coral atoll’s jungle. Many asylum seekers take advantage of the afternoon open centre hours at the RPCs to catch a bus down to the boat harbour.</p>
<p>“No, I can’t swim, but I just like to come here because it’s cooler than at the centres. The heat sticks to you up there,” Khadija, an Iranian asylum seeker says to me. “In Iran, we never have this kind of heat.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Refugees in Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
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<p>Like the majority of Nauru’s new refugee population, Khadija stands out. She’s 20 and most of her life has been spent in Tehran then Jakarta: cosmopolitan, urban hubs at odds with small Pacific island climes. She, as with so many other asylum seekers I speak with in Nauru, took a boat from Indonesia in the hopes of reaching Australia to claim asylum. The financial cost and possible dangers were enormous. It cost AU$10,000 (just over £5,000) for the boat alone, she tells me. But she and her sister were escaping extreme domestic abuse.</p>
<p>Not far from us, on the concrete walls of the boat harbour, sit a group of Nauruan Community Liaison Officers, also dressed in distinctive fluorescent vests. They are tasked with dealing with conflicts that arise between refugees and locals now that refugees are being resettled on Nauruan visas around the island. Our conversation moves to some of these conflicts. Khadija tells me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have Nauruan friends, but no, I don’t want to be here. I’d never heard of Nauru before I came here. I was scared, I didn’t know where they were taking me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abdul, a friend of hers, catches wind of our conversation as he dries himself off with a towel nearby. “I don’t think anyone had heard of this place! I mean, why would we want to come here? It’s a dump!”</p>
<p>“Well, a lot of Nauruans have been kind, but there are no jobs here for us here. How can we set up lives? No one wants to be here,” Khadija says, worry lines coursing her face.</p>
<p>We speak about the latest Guardian Australia <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/even-god-cant-help-you-here-nauru-refugees-describe-a-life-devoid-of-hope">media report</a> of Nauruans beating up a refugee. Abdul has a lot to say on the matter: “You never know. Sometimes it’s true, there are fights that happen. Sometimes it’s desperation. Refugees trying to bring media attention to their situation. This is all expected. Send people to a very different part of the world where they don’t want to be and see what happens.”</p>
<p>Khadija interjects: “And refugees here will also do anything to get to Australia. You can’t send people somewhere so different and not expect them to protest. It’s not nice for the Nauruans, but a lot of refugees don’t care about that.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Community Liaison Officers in Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
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<p>I think of the placards covering the fence of a nearby refugee resettlement compound and the doors of the Australian-funded refugee businesses (largely beauty salons and takeaways) that are all firmly closed in protest. I had been in conversation earlier that week with a group of Nauruans working at the RPCs, who had told me of “shit smeared on the walls” and “taps left on” from asylum seekers in desperate protest. Only a few years before I arrived in Nauru, one of the RPC buildings had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/20/nauru-detention-centre-burns-down">burned to the ground</a>.</p>
<p>“It’s not just between locals and refugees,” points out Khadija. “It’s also between refugees, of course. I’m Shia. My sister and I were put together with someone who’s Sunni. They made life difficult for us. They had to move us to a different section.” Abdul nods, adding: “There was one guy who had to be moved to separate hotel accommodation because it got so bad.”</p>
<h2>Secrecy, violence and segregation</h2>
<p>The kind of secrecy, violence and segregation that Khadija and Abdul speak of underpins daily life in Nauru. Around the island, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X19300784">the destructive realities</a> of outsourcing asylum are palpable.</p>
<p>Aziz, an Iraqi refugee, living in resettlement accommodation, tells me of the cries when he goes to sleep at night:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hear my neighbour through the walls, I don’t know what he saw before he came to Nauru.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Marie, an Australian torture and trauma counsellor, told me “you can’t begin to help people work through trauma when it’s exacerbated by being in Nauru”. She says Nauru has never had the capacity or the infrastructure to effectively support asylum seekers and refugees.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Protests outside a refugee resettlement compound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
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<p>Marie’s latter point is one I’ve heard several times. Prior to the Australian arrangement, Nauru had no history of refugee processing or resettlement. To make this outsourced arrangement a reality, the Australian government funded fly-in-fly-out Australian counsellors in addition to asylum legal support, interpreters, refugee adjudication and appeals tribunals, education and medics. However, counsellors like Marie were largely ineffective – palliative at best. Asylum seekers I spoke with described experiencing overwhelming powerlessness, depression, and identity crises because of the offshore arrangement.</p>
<p>Industry contractors I spoke with recounted similar stories of human suffering. Sarah, a facility manager from the Australian corporate management firm, told me of her recurring nightmares, having witnessed asylum seekers sewing their lips together in her work at the RPCs. </p>
<p>Vivian, a mental health counsellor to the Australian Immigration Department, made the damaging toll of working in Nauru explicit in our interview. She said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The compromises that people are in, and every day going to work to do bad things to others is making them feel ill. I had a client who had breast cancer who said to me, ‘I believe that I will be punished for what I’m doing by getting my breast cancer back.’ It’s a toxic environment and it sends people mad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trevor, a security guard at the RPCs, described the hunger strikes he tried to resolve: “But it’s not just hunger strikes,” he added, visibly upset.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Self-immolation, self-harm, riots, arson, suicide, jumps from roofs, sewing lips. Asylum seekers are desperate not to be here and so many of them have been through all kinds of traumatic experiences I can’t even imagine before being sent here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sarah and Trevor are just some of the many industry contractors I spoke with who bear the scars of witnessing these devastating situations. In fact, lawsuits from past contracted Australian workers to Nauru <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/immigration-department-pays-1-million-compensation-to-save-the-children-workers-fired-from-nauru-20170131-gu27nm.html">still plague</a> the Australian government. </p>
<p>Many locals were initially sympathetic to the plight of refugees. However, over the years, this sympathy turned to anger as Nauruans contended being represented as savages and human rights abusers in parts of the media and by certain refugee solidarity activists. “Look at this stuff they write … They haven’t even been here,” says Oliana, a Nauruan government worker. </p>
<h2>A growing trend</h2>
<p>The kind of outsourcing arrangement between Australia and Nauru seems outlandish, but it is not unique. It is part of a model of wealthier western countries funding poorer countries to carry out border enforcement. Australia is often cited as a case study of outsourcing asylum, but this system has historical precedents.</p>
<p>Asylum as a formal international legal procedure was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/34/3/2676/6084556?guestAccessKey=54f5325e-c578-4470-a950-b6ce80728611&login=false">institutionalised</a> across the early 20th century. European governments sought increased control over the demographic makeup and political structure of their nation states. Some feared disproportionate numbers of undocumented migrant arrivals. It was in this climate that the international refugee agencies pioneered systems of so-called burden-sharing. </p>
<p>In the early 20th century, the Nansen Office and Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees spearheaded moving refugees (largely Russians, Armenians, and Greeks) between countries. Just a few decades later, huge numbers of Jewish refugees sought to escape the atrocities of the second world war. Many European countries refused to provide sanctuary to Jewish refugees, referring to the <a href="https://www-jstor-org.liblink.uncw.edu/stable/pdf/3020054.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A1c89ab334e4c9c5715f1ccc22e816413&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&origin=&initiator=search-results">“Jewish problem”</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, countries as far flung as the Dominican Republic and Ecuador promoted themselves as destinations for Jewish refugees to attract political and economic support. The International Refugee Organization - a precursor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) active between 1946-1952 - took this system of burden-sharing to new heights, relocating more than <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article-abstract/34/3/2676/6084556">a million refugees</a> from Europe to the Americas, Israel, South Africa and Oceania between 1947 and 1951.</p>
<p>As asylum seekers changed from eastern Europeans to Africans and Asians from the 1970s, the term “asylum seeker” attracted <a href="https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/4148518/download?download_frd=1">negative connotations</a> in western political and media discourse. It became shorthand for economic opportunism, mass movements and threats to security. Tough measures on asylum, including intercepting migrants before arrival, soon become a touchstone for left and right-leaning governments alike. </p>
<p>Outsourced <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/external-processing-asylum?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cff1d97f-cca0-47f3-9dda-69235156f741">asylum models</a> have since been adopted across the EU. There are agreements with eastern Europe, Turkey, north and East Africa, and Central Asia. The US has experimented with several of what are termed extra-territorial asylum processing schemes, including processing Haitian asylum seekers in <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Guantanamo</a> in the 1990s, establishing facilities to assess asylum claims across Central America, funding local advertisements to dissuade migrants, as well as financing border enforcement and national asylum systems across Mexico and Central America.</p>
<p>Many Asian countries, including China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have implemented restrictive detention and temporary visa practices for African migrants, in particular. So-called transit regions, such as South Asia, eastern Europe and North Africa have also seen significant levels of funding and resources going into policing, detention, and other forms of immigration control.</p>
<p>The UK has toyed with different externalised border enforcement measures over the years. The Rwanda deal is one such arrangement. Sunak <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-tory-rwanda-migrants-b2150863.html">has said</a> that he will do “whatever it takes to make the Rwanda plan work”, describing “illegal migration” as an “emergency”. In June 2022, the first flight of four asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda was blocked after an injunction from the ECHR alleged it was a violation of civil and political rights. </p>
<p>Others question the efficacy of the £140 million <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-rwanda-strengthen-agreement-to-deal-with-global-migration-issues">Illegal Migration Bill</a> that is designed for only a small number of asylum seekers: the Rwandan government has agreed to receive 200 asylum seekers a year across a five-year trial period. Meanwhile, Braverman has <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-12-19/debates/B5009C67-E69A-4248-8F16-77439DE48472/MigrationAndEconomicDevelopment">declared</a> that relocating people to Rwanda is a “ground-breaking migration and economic development partnership” and “an innovative way of addressing a major problem” of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/suella-braverman-small-boats-b2298187.html">“billions of”</a> people coming [to the UK].</p>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/knowsley-asylum-seeker-hotel-riot-b2281367.html">Anti-migrant protests</a> outside asylum seeker housing in Knowsley and Dover in the UK have also led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/13/attack-migrants-knowsley-ministers-violence-asylum-seekers">concerns</a> that the Conservative government is capitalising on xenophobic sentiments. As legal debates continue around the legitimacy of the arrangement, Sunak has put together legislation that would disallow anyone reaching the UK to claim asylum without prior clearance. </p>
<p>The legislation would extend the government’s ability to detain them beyond the current permissible 28 days. It would also enable their deportation to a third country, such as Rwanda – the only country that has agreed to such a strategy. The former home secretary, Priti Patel, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/168415/ghana-government-denies-uks-operation-dead-meat-scheme/">attempted deals</a> with countries including Ghana and Kenya, which were rejected locally.</p>
<p>But Rwanda has yet to experience the implications of the deal. Rwanda does have a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61882542">recent failed history</a> of taking asylum seekers through a similar arrangement. In agreement with Israel’s Netanyahu government, Rwanda received some 4,000 Eritreans and Sudanese between 2014 and 2017. At the time, Netanyahu marshalled a similar narrative steeped in racial bias around the country’s mistanenim or <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/09/middleeast/israel-african-migrants-intl/index.html">“infiltrators”</a>. Israel paid the Rwandan government US$5,000 for every asylum seeker, each of whom received US$3,500 and their airfare. Almost all are thought to have left the country immediately. Yet, unlike the proposed UK-Rwanda deal, this coerced voluntary deportation scheme did not involve a long-term asylum processing and resettlement arrangement. Such a proposition presents far greater concerns: ones raised not just in Nauru but also across my other fieldwork sites.</p>
<h2>US and Guatemala: conflicting refugee histories</h2>
<p>Flores is a picturesque island village in Guatemala’s northernmost Petén region. Located deep in the jungle in Lake Peten Itza, it is a place where the concept of claiming asylum to – not from – was little heard of prior to 2010. I am sitting in Flores’ main church square for World Refugee Day in June 2022. It is a new event for the island, put together by UNHCR’s new Petén field office, to socialise Guatemalan residents in refugee protection. Under the slogan “Reborn in Guate”, UNHCR has devised a day-long programme of art, folklore, dance, music and poetry.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">World Refugee Day in the Petén.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2022.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“We have to be careful with using the word refugees,” whispers Alessandra, a UNHCR official, as a group of young Honduran rappers take the stage. “Many people, particularly Indigenous Maya, still have such vivid memories of when they were refugees. We don’t want it to seem like anyone’s getting preferential treatment or that they accuse our new refugee arrivals of gaming the system”.</p>
<p>This goes back to Guatemala’s four decade-long civil war. From the 1950s to the 1990s, genocidal policies <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-blood-of-guatemala">claimed the lives</a> of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Maya, or Maya Q’eqchi’. During this period, the US provided counter-insurgency training and military supplies to Guatemalan military and police, which heightened the escalation of violence.</p>
<p>In Santa Elena, just across the causeway from Flores, I have a long conversation with a local fruit market vendor, Estella, about this time. She was a young girl when the civil war broke out. Caught in the gunfire between guerrilla forces, she and her family, like so many Maya Q’eqchi’, eventually crossed the border to Mexico in the 1980s in hopes of survival. After nearly a decade living in different refugee camps in southern Mexico, she eventually returned to the Petén as a middle-aged woman in 1995, not long after the peace process negotiations.</p>
<p>“Most of my life, I was in fear of the military finding my family,” she says. “We moved between refugee camps in Mexico, almost every year it felt like. Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Roo,” she slowly counts the different states on her fingers, adding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We never knew if the Mexican government was on our side or if we might be handed over to the Guatemalan army. The Guatemalan army was always coming into Mexico, looking for guerrilla soldiers in the camps. We knew that if they found us, we would be killed without any mercy, we’d seen this happen to others.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All those years spent living in exile in refugee camps before returning to the Petén, gives Estella pause when discussing the new refugee programmes. “It confuses me. These people aren’t refugees. They haven’t been through the kind of suffering we have,” she says. “Many Maya never got their land back and still live as refugees in Guatemala. They have all these programmes for the new refugees, and make such a big deal about them, they even get a month of accommodation, but we Maya experience so much inequality that has never been resolved.”</p>
<p>Guatemala still has one of the most unequal systems of land tenure in the world. The violence of the civil war resulted in the loss of livelihoods for many Maya, including huge unemployment that lingers to this day. Oil palm plantations, taking over great swaths of north-eastern Guatemala that are home to Q’eqchi’ communities, are continuing to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/2/6/palm-oil-industry-expansion-spurs-guatemala-indigenous-migration">fuel displacement</a>. Substantial numbers of Guatemalans are also deported back from the US and Mexico each year (almost <a href="https://www.laprensalatina.com/last-guatemalan-deportees-from-us-in-2022-arrive-home-amid-broken-dreams/">100,000 migrants</a> in 2022 alone), compounding these tensions. </p>
<p>It is for this reason that the Guatemalan government avoids calling resettled regional migrants refugees. Officials I speak with at Guatemala City’s Migration Institute emphasise avoiding the term. Not only does it evoke traumatic memories for many, but the government fears public perceptions of preferential treatment of US-funded, regional refugees.</p>
<p>Yet, Guatemala is visibly promoting itself as an asylum destination, as the World Refugee Day celebrations make clear. In our conversation, Estella references the posters that cover Santa Elena’s central bus station. At her recommendation, I go to look at the almost tourist-style advertisements that stretch dramatically across the façade of the arrivals hall. One is fringed with stick figures of people running for safety and the logos of UNHCR and El Refugio de la Niñez, Guatemala’s national refugee support agency. At its centre, it features a family holding hands as they clamber over train tracks. In large blue font, with the words “danger”, “protection”, and “refugee” highlighted, it reads:</p>
<p>“If your life is in danger, and you cannot return to your country, you can ask for protection as a refugee in Guatemala. We can help you!”</p>
<p>Around another corner in the terminal, signs point towards a small office, the Attention Centre for Migrants and Refugees. Inside, I see a small team of Guatemalan social workers with leaflets explaining the process of claiming asylum in Guatemala.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Promoting Asylum in the Petén.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2022.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These efforts constitute the US’ latest outsourced asylum strategy. As part of a regional approach begun in 2017, known as the Regional Comprehensive Protection and Solutions Framework (or its Spanish acronym <a href="https://mirps-platform.org/en/">MIRPS</a>). Guatemala, together with Mexico and other Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama) is steadily developing the capacity to receive and support asylum claims in the country. Santa Elena is a way station for Honduran migrants making the long journey up to the US. Heightened US-funded border enforcement further south along Guatemala’s main land borders has also pushed more people to pass through the northern Petén border, where I conducted my research. </p>
<p>Migrants are encouraged to claim asylum for Mexico or Central America, rather than making their claims to the US. Limitations at the US-Mexico border, combined with the exorbitant costs and danger of making the crossing undocumented, are pushing more migrants to applying for asylum regionally.
Claiming asylum in Guatemala or other third countries might soon be a legal requirement. In 2023, the US Supreme Court issued a <a href="https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-policy-briefs/practice-alert-the-proposed-asylum-transit-ban">hotly contested</a> proposed rule known as the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/23/2023-03718/circumvention-of-lawful-pathways">“transit ban”</a> – asylum seekers who pass through a third country en route to the US-Mexico border must claim asylum there first.</p>
<p>But very few migrants are interested in claiming asylum locally. Like the UK-Rwanda deal, the US plan also functions largely as spectacle. Although the numbers of asylum claims filed to Guatemala’s new National Commission for Refugees is increasing, only 634 refugee visa holders and 1,410 asylum-seekers <a href="https://reporting.unhcr.org/guatemala">reside in Guatemala</a>.</p>
<h2>Memories of exile</h2>
<p>Estella’s confusion at the visible effects of outsourcing asylum in Guatemala foreshadows additional dynamics that the UK-Rwanda deal might produce. Like Guatemala, Rwanda is also a country with a tragic history of producing refugees. The 1994 Rwandan genocide led to the massacre of next to a million people. Horrific numbers of women were sexually assaulted. Over two million Rwandans fled to neighbouring countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region including Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Following the end of the civil war, an estimated <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2003/1/3e15a6397/eight-year-rwandan-refugee-saga-tanzania-comes-end.html#:%7E:text=An%20estimated%201.3%20million%20Rwandans,in%20the%20summer%20of%201994.">1.3 million Rwandan refugees</a> returned after over two years in exile. As with Guatemala, memories of exile and return are ever-present in Rwanda. Outsourcing asylum to regions with pre-existing local refugee populations can incite the tensions voiced by Estella and others I spoke with.</p>
<p>Unlike Guatemala, Rwanda does have a history of formal refugee protection outside of the return of its own citizens. Almost <a href="https://reporting.unhcr.org/rwanda">164,000 refugees</a> live in refugee camps or urban areas in Rwanda. However, these refugees are from surrounding East African regions, such as the DRC and Burundi. Those asylum seekers who have received notices of intent from the UK Home Office (making them at risk of being sent to Rwanda) are largely from the same countries as those I met in Nauru: Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. These are countries that are ethnically and linguistically distinct to Rwanda.</p>
<p>Even in the US asylum arrangement with Guatemala, most refugees given residency there are from surrounding Spanish-speaking countries. Here, the emphasis is on developing a viable regional resettlement framework. That the UK is considering sending asylum seekers from far different regions to a country still raw from its own refugee dynamics does not bode well. It was the cultivation of ethnic hierarchies between Tutsis and Hutus under Belgian colonial rule that resulted in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in the first place. </p>
<h2>A toxic policy with little returns</h2>
<p>My fieldwork findings from Nauru and Guatemala paint a bleak picture of the impacts of outsourcing asylum, relevant to the UK-Rwanda arrangement. The British government is setting up for similar entrapment in a costly operation, totals that in Australia financially spiralled to an <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/6/">estimated</a> AU$9.65 billion (over £5 billion) since July 2013.</p>
<p>Rwanda is a country that, unlike the UK, does not have a substantial Middle Eastern diaspora. The Rwandan government will require enormous investment to support new populations from well outside the East African region. The British government – and ultimately taxpayer – will end up shouldering these costs. Sustaining the operations in the face of ongoing activism and High Court pushbacks will require evermore Rwandan investments to ensure its international legal compliance. Rwanda, like Nauru, will have major challenges to contend with too, including education, social integration, housing capacity, and mental health and trauma-related concerns. </p>
<p>As a migration governance strategy, the UK-Rwanda deal makes little sense. It will cost the British taxpayer <a href="https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/why-uk-government-should-rethink-its-plan-send-asylum-seekers-uk-rwanda">far more</a> than the economic and social benefits of integrating the small number of migrants into the British workforce.</p>
<p>Since the post-war era, international migration worldwide has remained stable, as a percentage of the global population it stands at <a href="https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/">3.6%</a>. This is a fraction of the world’s population, meaning that most people migrate within countries, rather than across borders. The majority of irregular migrants to the UK are <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-home-office-is-now-publishing-stats-on-irregular-migration-heres-what-they-do-and-dont-tell-us-177955">visa over-stayers</a> and not those who take a boat across the English Channel. Typically, it is also not the poorest people who migrate. Taking a boat is an expensive endeavour and migrants require considerable resources to migrate, particularly across international borders. </p>
<h2>‘A laboratory experiment gone wrong’</h2>
<p>A new deal was finally struck for Nauru after almost a decade of indecision as to how to end the arrangement. It came amid a backdrop of deepening civil unrest, a series of tragic self-immolations, and a Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive">Nauru Files</a> campaign that made global headlines. The Australian government arranged with the Obama administration a deal in which 1,250 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island would be resettled in the US.</p>
<p>These resettlement places were still honoured when Donald Trump entered office in 2016, as part of what Trump notoriously described as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/02/trump-told-turnbull-refugee-agreement-was-the-worst-deal-ever-report">“dumb, dumb deal”</a>. Hamid, an Afghani refugee acquaintance in Nauru, sent me an email at the time. He expressed his excitement about his upcoming move to the US, but also his fear at the racism he might encounter. Like Hamid, most refugees have since been resettled across the US, Canada, and eventually through the long-standing <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/479403/first-nauru-refugees-arrive-in-new-zealand-under-resettlement-deal">New Zealand offer</a>. But 60 refugees remain in Nauru, with the country still marred in refugee protests locally.</p>
<p>Heated debates continue in Australia. In March, the Albanese Labor government, the Liberal Party and the One Nation Party voted against the Green Party’s <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1362">Migration Amendment Evacuation to Safety Bill 2023</a>. This bill called for those refugees held in Nauru to be moved to Australia, while the Australian government pursued further resettlement options. </p>
<p>Nauru remains funded by the Australian government with the possibility that these operations might be restarted in the future. In October 2022, the Australian government <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8064165/obscene-amount-for-nauru-contract/">awarded</a> an AU$422 million (roughly £230 million) contract with the US-based private prison contractor, Management and Training Corporation, until September 2025 to hold refugees in Nauru.</p>
<p>Instead of debating the legitimacy of asylum, countries could benefit from providing work rights to migrant populations. The UK is well prepared for meeting these integration needs. Because of centuries of migration (much wrought through colonialism) the UK has already invested significant resources into supporting newcomers keen to integrate into the labour market. The Oxford Migration Observatory <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/">recently found</a> that higher net migration reduces pressure on government debt over time. Incoming migrants are generally younger and of working age than the wider population. This means that they are more likely to work and contribute to public finances. </p>
<p>Not only is this <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/">shown to</a> support migrant livelihoods, but it can also benefit the economies of sending and receiving countries in the long-term. These kinds of boosts to the economy and the labour market are much-needed in the post-<a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/covid-19-and-key-workers-what-role-do-migrants-play-in-your-region-42847cb9/">COVID-19</a> and <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/how-is-the-end-of-free-movement-affecting-the-low-wage-labour-force-in-the-uk/">post-Brexit labour environment</a>.</p>
<p>Back to 2016 and I am sitting in a senior Australian bureaucrat’s office in Canberra, discussing the standstill underway with the Nauru arrangement. I ask what the future holds for the offshoring policy. “Most politicians want it to end, but they’re unsure how to do it without losing face,” he replies. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Protests, many refugees on suicide watch, hunger strike, people sewing their lips together, no one interested in integrating locally in Nauru, it frankly just isn’t sustainable. It was never meant to be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He pauses, adding: “Not to mention, ethically. It’s a laboratory experiment gone wrong.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anthropological fieldwork into ‘outsourced’ asylum measures in Nauru and Guatemala reveal how they actually work - and don’t work - in practice.Julia Morris, Assistant Professor of International Studies, University of North Carolina WilmingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648002016-09-13T00:31:36Z2016-09-13T00:31:36ZFree speech is at risk in Australia – and it’s not from Section 18C<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137126/original/image-20160909-13345-osi777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has warned against laws that violate freedom.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Who can say what to whom in Australia? In this six-part series, we look at the complex idea of freedom of speech, who gets to exercise it and whether it is being curtailed in public debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act – Australia’s federal hate speech law – has tended to dominate public debate about free speech for the last few years. This has meant other important laws that restrict free speech in broad ways are being overlooked.</p>
<p>While the 18C debate has raged, important new restrictions on freedom of speech have been introduced in Australia. These have flown much further under the radar.</p>
<p>These restrictions should concern us, because they have a wide-ranging impact on the freedom of speech that is essential to democratic deliberation. </p>
<p>Free speech does the work of democratic governance by providing the people with the information they need to govern themselves, to hold their representatives accountable, and to decide which policies to accept or reject. </p>
<p>Citizens need to be able to convey their opinions to government and engage in criticism of policy. Government needs to accept this criticism, even vehement criticism, as part and parcel of governing in a democracy.</p>
<p>The first law that impinges of freedom of speech is the introduction in 2014 of a <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/s969_first-senate/toc_pdf/1417820.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">new power</a> for the attorney-general to declare an operation a “special intelligence operation”, including retrospectively. Once such a declaration has been made, it becomes a crime for journalists to report on these operations. </p>
<p>There is no public interest disclosure exemption under this law. So, even journalists reporting on activities that a government might be undertaking illegally or corruptly can still be prohibited.</p>
<p>In 2015 the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor conducted a review of the impact of this law on journalists. It concluded the law created uncertainty about what journalists could publish. Although the government <a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/Mediareleases/Pages/2016/FirstQuarter/2-Feburary-2016-Government-response-to-INSLM-report-on-the-impact-on-journalists-of-section-35P-of-the-ASIO-Act-1979.aspx">agreed to its recommendations in 2016</a>, those changes have not yet been implemented.</p>
<p>Second, a new prohibition introduced in the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/nslaa12014430/">same legislation</a> on the copying or disclosing of information gathered by employees of a range of intelligence organisations also contained no protection for the disclosure of illegal activities. </p>
<p>In both the <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2015/10/29/2nd_cir_opinion_clapper.pdf">US</a> and <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=150642&doclang=EN">Europe</a>, mass data collection and retention procedures that were defended by governments as compliant with the law, including stronger human rights laws than Australia has, have subsequently been found to have been undertaken illegally.</p>
<p>In 2015, the federal government introduced a new <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/abfa2015225/">law</a> prohibiting “entrusted persons” employed in asylum seeker detention centres from disclosing protected information. </p>
<p>The exact meaning of who the law applies to is unclear, but the passage of this legislation led the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants to <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16503&LangID=E">cancel a planned visit</a> here in September 2015. This decision was made on the ground that the law would discourage people he wanted to speak with from being able to freely disclose information to him.</p>
<p>This law has recently been challenged by former employees of the detention centre on Nauru. They have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/this-is-critical-103-nauru-and-manus-staff-speak-out-their-letter-in-full">spoken out</a> about their experiences of detention centres after the release of the Nauru files.</p>
<p>The move to curb freedom of speech in some areas is not restricted to the federal government. State governments, for example, are moving to pass new legislation to shut down the peaceful right to protest.</p>
<p>In 2014 the Tasmanian government enacted new anti-protest legislation. The law was used against anti-logging protesters who were objecting to the clear-felling of native forests in January 2016. Veteran environmentalist and former Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/10/bob-brown-challenges-tasmanian-anti-protest-laws-in-high-court/">legal challenge</a> to that legislation in the High Court.</p>
<p>In 2015, Western Australia attempted to follow suit and is currently pursuing the enactment of a new <a href="http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/bills.nsf/BillProgressPopup?openForm&ParentUNID=1E00CF48C52EF57848257DF6000AA4DF">anti-protest law</a>. In New South Wales, the government gave an undertaking in 2014 to do the same thing – and in 2016 it passed a <a href="http://portsea.austlii.edu.au/cgi-pit/maketoc.py?skel=/home/www/pit/xml/nsw/act/nswA2016-7_skel.xml&date=">new law</a> to increase police powers in relation to protests.</p>
<p>Governments at both federal and state levels are implementing new speech-restricting laws with unnerving frequency. In 2015, Human Rights Commission president <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/democracy-undermined-by-new-laws-says-gillian-triggs/news-story/04a8d873b8c04b96a7bae954c44adbb0">Gillian Triggs</a> warned of laws being passed by successive governments that “violate fundamental freedoms”.</p>
<p>These kinds of overreaching laws restrict the kinds of speech that are vital to democratic accountability. Any threat to the exposure of government activities that are corrupt or illegal, and the protection of the right to protest, should be a cause for concern for those with a genuine interest in protecting the vital freedom of speech that is essential to a functioning democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64800/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Gelber has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Academy of Social Sciences Australia.</span></em></p>While the debate around Section 18C has raged, a host of other laws that impinge on freedom of speech have been quietly introduced.Katharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641132016-08-21T20:04:07Z2016-08-21T20:04:07ZOffshore detention: Australians have a right to know what is done in their name<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134704/original/image-20160819-6906-1u7t8tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C496%2C2385%2C1445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Governments directly and indirectly control who is allowed to tell the refugees’ stories of how they are treated in offshore detention.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Eoin Blackwell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How did one of the world’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/we-are-the-most-successful-multicultural-society-in-the-world-now-come-together-to-fight-radicalism-says-turnbull-2015-10">most-successful multicultural countries</a> made up of refugees and immigrants end up <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">harming children</a> who came to us seeking protection and help? One of the answers to this question is secrecy. </p>
<p>Successive Australian governments, both Labor and Coalition, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/nauru-abuse-reports-should-mark-an-opportunity-for-compassion-not-more-dehumanisation-63826">dehumanised refugees</a> and kept Australians in the dark about what really goes on in the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. </p>
<p>The cornerstone of the strategy is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/boats-secrecy-leads-to-bad-policy-without-democratic-accountability-43324">limit public access</a> to information. The policy started by the Rudd Labor government in 2013 has been put into overdrive by the Abbott and Turnbull Coalition governments.</p>
<p>There are three pillars to the secrecy strategy: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>outsourcing the centres to other sovereign nations;</p></li>
<li><p>outsourcing the centres’ operations to private contractors; and </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/01/detention-centre-staff-speak-out-in-defiance-of-new-asylum-secrecy-laws">imposing a gag</a> on current and former detention staff through the Border Force Act.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Outsourcing detention</h2>
<p>Australian journalists have found it very difficult, bordering on practically impossible, to obtain visas to visit Nauru. Applying for a media visa for Nauru comes with an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/nauru-visa-to-cost-8000">A$8,000 fee</a> – which is non-refundable even if the application is rejected. </p>
<p>The only journalists to be granted visas in the last two years <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/dateline-nauru-sifting-truth-from-spin/news-story/22ac3fac71e0df65fa0cab09b6ff2270">filed stories</a> that did not properly <a href="http://aca.nine.com.au/article/9132298/an-exclusive-look-inside-nauru">investigate</a> or challenge the Nauruan and Australian governments’ versions of the situation for refugees.</p>
<p>This means the two governments directly and indirectly control who is allowed onto the island to tell the refugees’ stories of how they are treated. This leads to speculation that serves no-one – not the refugees nor the Australian government nor the public.</p>
<p>The second issue with outsourcing refugee processing to another country is that neither Nauru nor Papua New Guinea has Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. This means an important journalistic tool is missing when it comes to seeking information. </p>
<p>This, combined with the <a href="http://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/kapitel-pdf/279_lidberg.pdf">poor FOI history</a> of Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection (and its predecessor), which have repeatedly <a href="https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-information/foi-decisions/foi-omi-reports/processing-of-non-routine-foi-requests-by-the-department-of-immigration-and-citizenship">blocked and delayed</a> requests, makes obtaining raw and unspun information about offshore refugee processing a time-consuming and frustrating task.</p>
<h2>Outsourcing to private contractors</h2>
<p>Wilson Security <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/protesters-to-blockade-wilson-security-car-parks-over-detention-centre-20160626-gpsgg0.html">is contracted</a> to provide security in the offshore centres. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-information/foi-resources/foi-agency-resources/documents-held-by-government-contractors-agency-obligations-under-the-freedom-of-information-act-1982">2010 amendments</a> to the federal FOI Act significantly strengthened the requirement on government agencies to obtain information from a private contractor when asked to do so. </p>
<p>However, contracting out adds another layer of complexity to using FOI effectively. The practical consequences are longer processing times, delays and the increased possibility of the contractor claiming the information can’t be released due to commercial-in-confidence issues.</p>
<h2>The Border Force Act disclosure offence</h2>
<p>In July 2015, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/01/detention-centre-staff-speak-out-in-defiance-of-new-asylum-secrecy-laws">Australian Border Force Act</a> came into force. Its controversial disclosure offence section extended the questionable Australian tradition of <a href="http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/3-overview-current-secrecy-laws/general-criminal-offences">limiting public servants’ right to public speech</a> and participation in public debate. </p>
<p>The section effectively stops current and former staff, including those from volunteer organisations such as Save the Children, speaking out about conditions in refugee detention centres. </p>
<p>It is nigh-on impossible to see how this gag section can be in the public interest. But it is easy to see how it is in the government’s political interest.</p>
<h2>What are the consequences?</h2>
<p>The consequence of the fortress of secrecy built on these three pillars is that Australians don’t know what is being done in their name on Nauru and Manus Island. </p>
<p>It also means the refugees are dehumanised. Suffering children and families become numbers instead of human beings. </p>
<p>Every one of the nearly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/revealed-peter-duttons-extensive-briefings-about-risks-and-harm-to-children-on-nauru?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=186466&subid=14712616&CMP=ema_632">1,300 refugees</a> currently on Nauru and Manus has heartbreaking and crucial stories to tell. If Australians were allowed to hear and see those stories, the centres would have been closed a long time ago.</p>
<p>If offshore detention is to continue, the Australian government should:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>stop outsourcing to private contractors. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection should run the centres to allow for proper accountability;</p></li>
<li><p>be completely transparent about the centres’ operations. Redact personal information, but publish as much as possible, including incident reports;</p></li>
<li><p>facilitate access to the centres for journalists and members of the public; and</p></li>
<li><p>scrap the gag section on detention centre staff, current and former, in the Border Force Act.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We don’t need a Senate inquiry or royal commission to figure out what needs to be done. More than enough evidence is available thanks to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">Nauru files</a>, former detention centre staff sharing their experiences, and the Australian Human Rights Commission’s <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/national-inquiry-children-immigration-detention-2014">report</a> on children in immigration detention. The government must do the decent and right thing by the refugees and the Australian public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Lidberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Successive Australian governments have dehumanised refugees and kept Australians in the dark about what really goes on in the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.Johan Lidberg, Senior Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641322016-08-18T13:17:37Z2016-08-18T13:17:37ZGrattan on Friday: Dutton should stop whinging and find solution to the offshore problem<p>Immigration Minister Peter Dutton always sounds put upon. This week he was bleating about Guardian Australia and the ABC “defaming” him, and those pesky people who care about what’s happening in Nauru leaking documents.</p>
<p>Dutton might remember that a good minister solves problems. A bad one whinges, whips up fear, invents things, and puts point-scoring above policy.</p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull should make resolving the future of those on Nauru and Manus Island Dutton’s immediate priority, and give him a timeframe.</p>
<p>After Turnbull was heckled by a handful of protesters during his Wednesday CEDA speech, he asked the police for a report and CEDA to explain how the disruptors got into the room. He should also have put a few questions to Dutton.</p>
<p>Such as these. Why, with no boats arriving for a long time, do we still have this offshore issue? Why are we perpetuating it, allowing people to be treated inhumanely and Australia to be internationally embarrassed? Why can’t this government juggle deterrence and resettlement in Australia, as the Howard government finally was forced to do?</p>
<p>The government claims credit for stopping boat arrivals, but it has lacked the wit or will to clear the offshore centres.</p>
<p>To be fair, it is not just Dutton who has failed, or his predecessor Scott Morrison. </p>
<p>Foreign Minister Julie Bishop tried unsuccessfully to get an agreement with Iran to compulsorily return people found not to be refugees. She was part of a deal with Cambodia to take some refugees – but hardly anyone has gone there. And she was involved in negotiations with Papua New Guinea, which so far has settled only a handful of the Manus people into the community – Dutton has confirmed the number is fewer than 20.</p>
<p>Dutton on Thursday railed about the leaking of more than 2100 Nauru incident reports to Guardian Australia and accused Save the Children of being the source (which it strongly denied). </p>
<p>He told the ABC: “The trouble, frankly, with the approach of the Guardian and the ABC has been to trivialise the very serious issues by trying to promote the 2,100 reports as somehow, all of those being serious when they’re not”. Many related to parents’ corporal punishment of their children, he said, and “some minor assaults by detainees on detainees, refugees on refugees”.</p>
<p>Moreover, “people should be a little more circumspect because my desire, the government’s desire, is to treat people with dignity … I’m not going to be defamed by the Guardian and by the ABC because we are doing everything within our power to provide support for people”. </p>
<p>When it comes to defaming, Dutton can hardly talk, remembering how he denounced in extravagant terms Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young over her claim, later vindicated, that she was spied on in Nauru.</p>
<p>Dutton likes to emphasise how it was Labor that re-established the offshore centres. That’s true, but if Labor hadn’t done so, the Coalition government would have. The Abbott opposition endlessly pressed the point.</p>
<p>The minister crafts the facts to his case. When in April the PNG Supreme Court said holding asylum seekers was illegal and the PNG government foreshadowed the Manus Island centre would go, the Australian government was anxious both to kick the matter beyond the election and to get some solution short of closure. Dutton tried to portray it as PNG’s issue.</p>
<p>Now he has another line. “The closure of Manus will be the next dividend in the success of stopping the boats,” he said this week after his talks with PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neil. Well no, Peter: the closure of Manus – for which, despite the hype, there is no public timetable – will be the “dividend” of the PNG court decision.</p>
<p>Dutton remains adamant that no refugees from Manus will be allowed to come to Australia. They must either go to their home countries – despite being found to be in genuine fear of persecution – or settle in PNG, where they are clearly not welcome. </p>
<p>It should be noted that of 551 Manus men assessed by the PNG government as at the end of May, 98% had been found to be refugees. On Nauru, it was 77% of those assessed. Dutton has confirmed there is no third country in prospect for resettlement. He won’t countenance a country such as New Zealand, believing that would encourage the people smugglers.</p>
<p>Unless Turnbull wants to have this issue dog his prime ministership, an acceptable resettlement country or countries must be found soon or he should have the government bite the bullet and bring the people to Australia. Eventually Australia’s hand could be forced in relation to the Manus men if the PNG government ran out of patience – or couldn’t be bought off – and insisted Australia take responsibility for them.</p>
<p>The conclusion that the Australia option would mean the boats would inevitably start to arrive doesn’t follow. There is formidable sea power at the government’s disposal to stop them, and relations with Indonesia are at present positive enough to get co-operation in preventing people leaving.</p>
<p>It was notable this week that Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett, while specifically not urging the government to bring families from Nauru to Australia, said that if it did, “we would certainly accommodate a number of them in Western Australia and we’d certainly support them as a state government”. And that from a leader soon facing a difficult election.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s loss of authority complicates finding a solution. If he’d had a thumping election victory he’d be in a better position. As it is, if he acted decisively, the conservatives on the backbench and their media cheer squad could turn it into another mark against him. Dutton, one of the conservatives’ leaders and heroes, no doubt has an eye on his own base in dealing with the issue.</p>
<p>But sooner or later Turnbull surely has to do what he knows he should do. At least, one hopes.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/y3h8h-61e4dd?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/y3h8h-61e4dd?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Peter Dutton always sounds put upon. This week he was bleating about Guardian Australia and the ABC ‘defaming’ him.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640612016-08-17T23:59:53Z2016-08-17T23:59:53ZManus Island centre set to close – but where to for the detainees?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134535/original/image-20160817-3597-cvbbft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People protesting offshore detention of asylum seekers interrupted Malcolm Turnbull's speech to CEDA on Wednesday.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Manus Island Regional Processing Centre – one of the two key sites of Australia’s offshore immigration detention regime – <a href="http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/MANUS-REGIONAL-PROCESSING-CENTRE.aspx">will close</a>. A date is not set, nor any arrangement confirmed for resettling the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-17/manus-island-to-close-png-prime-minister-confirms/7759810">854 men still detained</a> there.</p>
<p>In April 2016, the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court found the detention arrangement on Manus Island <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/310461159/PNG-Supreme-Court-Decision-on-Manus-Island">was unconstitutional</a>. PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill immediately <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/png-pm-oneill-to-shut-manus-island-detention-centre/7364414">asked Australia to make alternative arrangements</a> for the detainees, implying <a href="https://theconversation.com/high-court-asked-to-declare-manus-detention-illegal-as-859-detainees-seek-their-day-in-court-58880">Australia is responsible</a> for what happens to them. </p>
<p>It has taken more than three months for the two governments to jointly announce the centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.</p>
<h2>Where will the detainees go?</h2>
<p>Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton, <a href="http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/MANUS-REGIONAL-PROCESSING-CENTRE.aspx">confirmed</a> “no-one” detained on Manus Island “will ever be settled in Australia”. Instead, the Australian government says the detainees must either resettle in PNG or return to their countries of origin.</p>
<p>Australia’s continued insistence that it will never resettle asylum seekers arriving by boat ignores practical realities. PNG is <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/15/australia/papua-new-guinea-pacific-non-solution">unable to provide a safe environment</a> for refugees. Australia has not made <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-not-manus-then-what-possible-alternatives-for-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-in-png-58514">any suitable third-party arrangement</a>. The “Cambodia solution” has been a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/australias-cambodia-refugee-resettlement-plan-a-failure-20160403-gnx3jv.html">costly failure</a>: that impoverished country has been unable to provide social protections for refugees.</p>
<p>Of those whose claims have been processed – about half of those detained on Manus – <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1516/Quick_Guides/Offshore">98% have been confirmed as refugees</a>. The others await <a href="http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/offshore-processing-refugee-status-determination-asylum-seekers-manus-island">proper processing</a> under the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10">UN Refugee Convention</a>.</p>
<p>Australia’s argument that refugees and asylum seekers can go back to their country of origin risks their return to persecution. The <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/excom/scip/3ae68ccd10/note-non-refoulement-submitted-high-commissioner.html">prohibition on refoulement</a> – the return of refugees to the site of persecution – is the fundamental principle of international refugee law.</p>
<h2>What does human rights law demand?</h2>
<p>Asylum seekers arriving by boat are often characterised as “queue-jumpers”, trying to enter through “<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-can-do-better-on-asian-boat-crisis-than-nope-nope-nope-42255">the back door</a>”. It bears repetition that, in fleeing persecution in their home countries, refugees are asserting their <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/AsylumFacts">legal right to seek asylum</a>.</p>
<p>International law does not give asylum seekers or refugees standing to hold countries accountable for human rights violations. Australia exploits this impunity to maintain practices that violate international law. </p>
<p>Yet despite their incapacity to bring claims against Australia, asylum seekers detained offshore are entitled to a range of universal rights and freedoms. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment;</p></li>
<li><p>freedom from punitive detention;</p></li>
<li><p>judicial oversight of their detention;</p></li>
<li><p>freedom from forced deportation;</p></li>
<li><p>access to quality health care, education and work; and</p></li>
<li><p>special protection for the rights of children and families.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Australia has demonstrated its willingness to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-international-condemnation-on-human-rights-mean-so-little-to-australia-53814">ignore or reject international criticism</a> of its violation of these rights.</p>
<h2>A reorientation in asylum seeker policy?</h2>
<p>Only hours before the Manus centre closure was announced, protesters interrupted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s speech to CEDA. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/close-the-bloody-camps-protesters-disrupt-malcolm-turnbull-speech">They demanded</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For God’s sake, Malcolm, close the fucking camps.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/266932076997739/">Rallies are planned</a> around Australia this month to call for an end to mandatory detention.</p>
<p>Pressure on the government is building from all quarters. Risking prosecution under <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/barns-newhouse-detention-centre-secrecy-just-got-even-worse/6501086">anti-whistleblower legislation</a>, 103 current and former Manus Island and Nauru staff have publicly demanded closure of the centres. They argue the evidence is clear: Australia’s practice is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/this-is-critical-103-nauru-and-manus-staff-speak-out-their-letter-in-full">systematically breaking</a> those subject to it.</p>
<p>Following the leaking of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">Nauru files</a> this month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/nauru-files-widespread-condemnation-of-australian-government-by-un-and-others">has called for</a> the removal of all detainees to humane conditions. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/after-the-nauru-files-how-can-australia-go-about-ending-offshore-detention?CMP=share_btn_tw">Migration experts</a> argue the only humane option is to close the centres and process asylum claims in Australia.</p>
<p>Critics have <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-did-we-become-so-indifferent-to-human-life-20160811-gqpxjj.html">noted the gulf</a> between political responses to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/07/25/4504895.htm">abuse scandal</a> in Northern Territory youth detention facilities – which immediately triggered a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-26/turnbull-calls-for-royal-commission-into-don-dale/7660164">royal commission</a> – and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive">2,116 reports</a> detailing abuse, assault, self-harm and inadequate living standards suffered by detainees on Nauru. </p>
<p>Key NGOs argue the <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse</a> must <a href="http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/royal-commission-must-examine-nauru-abuse/">extend its inquiry</a> to Nauru.</p>
<p>Is it possible that the announcement of the Manus centre’s closure indicates government acceptance that the offshore detention system is – as refugee <a href="https://www.asrc.org.au/campaigns/bringthemhere/">advocates</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahinthesen8/status/765813653945716741">claim</a> – <a href="http://berkeleytravaux.com/persecution-detention-australias-broken-asylum-system/">broken</a>? </p>
<p>Is the government searching for an alternative to offshore detention as public outrage grows? If so, it seems certain it will never admit as much. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134543/original/image-20160818-3608-1f4x9c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pressure on the government for a change in its asylum policy is building from all quarters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Eoin Blackwell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What the Manus closure should mean for Nauru</h2>
<p>It is essential that Australia comes to acknowledge the harms it has inflicted on thousands of vulnerable people who have committed no crime. In the short term, though, the most urgent priority must be the proper processing and appropriate resettlement of those still detained on Manus Island and Nauru. </p>
<p>The Manus closure was perhaps inevitable once the Supreme Court found PNG lacked authority to detain asylum seekers transferred there by Australia. No such judgment has been forthcoming in Nauru, but evidence reveals the suffering of people detained there under Australia’s authority. </p>
<p>It will be impossible for Australia to maintain its hardline approach to refugees indefinitely while representing itself as a responsible <a href="https://theconversation.com/cast-adrift-australia-risks-its-international-standing-over-asylum-seeker-policies-63872">international citizen</a>.</p>
<p>The first step in a reorientation of asylum policy must be the abandonment of offshore processing. Until this occurs, Australia cannot take responsibility for a process that it has shaped, or its consequences.</p>
<p>The major parties are <a href="https://theconversation.com/spot-the-difference-labor-vs-the-coalition-on-asylum-seekers-45581">largely united</a> on refugee policy, although <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-to-push-for-senate-inquiry-into-nauru-detention-centre-incident-report-leaks-20160813-gqs09e.html">cracks are appearing</a>. They are locked into practices that assume, despite a lack of evidence, offshore processing of some asylum seekers <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-no-evidence-that-asylum-seeker-deterrence-policy-works-8367">deters others</a> others from attempting the journey. </p>
<p>The government also refuses to acknowledge that onshore processing of asylum claims is not a guaranteed path to permanent settlement in Australia. <a href="http://un.org.au/2016/02/05/detaining-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-in-offshore-detention-centres-subject-to-international-obligations-despite-high-court-decision/">Regionally focused</a> <a href="http://www.julianburnside.com.au/an-alternative-to-offshore-detention/">alternative strategies</a> have been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-17/manus-island-detention-centre-to-close,-is-nauru/7760480">proposed</a>. These ought to be negotiated among regional partners with the support of the UNHCR. </p>
<p>Mandatory offshore detention is not the only way to manage refugee flows. And it is clearly not the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/forgotten_children_2014.pdf">humane</a> or <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/wr2016_web.pdf">legal</a> response. </p>
<p>The announcement that the Manus centre will close provides an opportunity for Australia to assess alternatives. Political leaders could choose to open a new public dialogue to bring about reform. Whether they have the will to pursue such a process or not, they have the power to bring Australian law and practice into line with our international legal obligations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Maguire is a member of Amnesty International and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. </span></em></p>It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.Amy Maguire, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639462016-08-17T00:37:25Z2016-08-17T00:37:25ZThe Nauru files: why don’t we believe victims of sexual abuse?<p>The release of the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">Nauru files</a>” last week revealed more than 2,000 incidents of sexual assault, child abuse and self-harm of asylum seekers, and documented the appalling living conditions for those held in offshore detention on Nauru.</p>
<p>Immigration Minister Peter Dutton <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/11/labor-will-reintroduce-bill-to-force-mandatory-reporting-of-child-abuse-after-nauru-files">dismissed</a> many of the files, including those documenting sexual assault, as “false allegations in an attempt to get to Australia”.</p>
<p>Dutton’s comments reinforce historically ingrained ideas about sexual assault victims as being “unreliable” or “untrustworthy”. His claims contribute towards a broader discourse that enables the dismissal, denial, and distrust of women and children who have experienced sexual violence.</p>
<h2>The ‘unreliable’ victim of sexual assault</h2>
<p>There is a long and problematic history of victim/survivors of sexual assault being constructed as “untrustworthy”. This is perhaps most infamously encapsulated in <a href="https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/24.%20Sexual%20Assault%20and%20Family%20Violence/history-activism-and-legal-change">Sir Matthew Hale’s</a> 17th-century remark that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rape is an accusation easily to be made, hard to be proved, and harder yet to be defended by the party accused, tho’ never so innocent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hale’s comments had an enduring effect on the treatment of sexual assault victims.</p>
<p>The notion that victims of sexual assault were inherently unreliable or prone to lying was enshrined in law through the <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1943388">requirement for corroboration</a> until relatively recently. Corroboration – that is, the independent verification of the victim’s testimony – reinforced the notion that victims of sexual assault could not be trusted.</p>
<p>The influence of these historical constructions is apparent in contemporary examples. Recent research from <a href="https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/media-and-resources/publications/2013-national-community-attitudes-towards-violence-against-women-survey">VicHealth</a> shows a large minority of Victorians believe women make false claims of rape, or that women say they were raped after having “regretted” sex.</p>
<p>Likewise, public discussion on high-profile sexual assault cases readily turn to speculation about the victim’s “motives” for coming forward. Women are often dismissed as having an ulterior motive; they are seen as “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-10-06/a_little_bit_sexually_assaulted_a_cup_of_milo_and_a_bad_lie_/39704">attention-seekers</a>” or “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/2012-the-year-when-it-became-okay-to-blame-victims-of-sexual-assault-8432716.html">gold-diggers</a>”. This perpetuates the idea that only certain classes or categories of victim warrant our belief or trust.</p>
<p>Victims who experience <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/publications/responding-womens-experiences-sexual-assault-institutional-and-care-se">mental health issues or trauma</a> are particularly likely to be dismissed. Their claims of sexual assault are explained as a manifestation of their illness. This is particularly problematic for asylum seekers, many of whom experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other trauma, both as a result of what they have experienced in their country of origin and in offshore detention.</p>
<h2>Child victims of sexual assault</h2>
<p>Children who have been sexually assaulted or abused also face a range of threats to their perceived credibility. Similar to women, children have historically been constructed as an “<a href="http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/18.%20Comments,%20Warnings%20and%20Directions%20to%20the%20Jury%20/warnings-about-unreliable-evidence">unreliable</a>” class of witness within the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Young children can be viewed as <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49641652_Child_Sexual_Abuse_Myths_Attitudes_Beliefs_and_Individual_Differences">prone to lying</a> or being fanciful. This view was promoted by Freud, who reinterpreted his patients’ claims of childhood sexual abuse as mere <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1984.tb01097.x/full">fantasies</a> (though this is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hic3.12083/abstract">heavily contested</a>).</p>
<p>The notion that children lie about sexual abuse was seen in the current <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/getattachment/4d7005d6-3842-45aa-b933-4e2023ded2eb/Complaint-handling-and-response-consultation-paper">Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse</a>. Children living in institutional settings were powerless against their abusers and often weren’t believed when they disclosed sexual abuse to adults.</p>
<h2>False allegations are rare</h2>
<p>Research suggests that false reports are <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/publications/true-or-false-contested-terrain-false-allegations/what-false-allegation-context-sexual-assault">rare</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/16/12/1345.short">According to</a> UK academic Liz Kelly, in the rare instances false allegations are made, there are usually reasons for the claims. In contrast to the stereotype of the “lying” or “vindictive” woman, false reports are rarely malicious.</p>
<p>In fact, the vast majority of sexual assault victims never report their experience. <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/archive/publications-2000s/non-reporting-and-hidden-recording-of-sexual-assault-an-international-literature-review.pdf">Not being believed</a> is a significant factor influencing the decision not to report.</p>
<h2>A new class of unreliable victim</h2>
<p>Dutton’s comments about asylum seekers making false claims of abuse on Nauru create of a new class of “unreliable” victim.</p>
<p>Those seeking asylum who have been sexually assaulted can be dismissed on the basis that there is again some ulterior motive for their claim. It means a group of people highly vulnerable to sexual assault are unlikely to be believed. Or, at the very least, it casts doubt over their disclosures.</p>
<p>Dismissing allegations of abuse mean these asylum seekers are even more vulnerable to sexual assault.</p>
<p>Dutton’s comments do a further disservice to all victims of sexual assault in propagating the age old myth that they frequently lie.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63946/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bianca Fileborn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Peter Dutton’s comments reinforced historically ingrained ideas about sexual assault victims as being ‘unreliable’ or ‘untrustworthy’.Bianca Fileborn, Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health & Society, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638722016-08-16T04:06:01Z2016-08-16T04:06:01ZCast adrift: Australia risks its international standing over asylum-seeker policies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134202/original/image-20160816-13042-svjie5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C163%2C2281%2C1423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Only Australia uses less-developed countries to process refugee claims.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Eoin Blackwell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">“Nauru files”</a>, which detail reports of abuse in Australia’s asylum-seeker detention centre on Nauru, have received <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/world/australia/nauru-asylum-seeker-refugee-abuse.html?_r=0">global attention</a> since their release. They should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess the longstanding policy of offshore detention of asylum seekers before more serious harm is inflicted both on those detained and on Australia’s international standing.</p>
<p>With international summits to be hosted by the <a href="https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/summit">United Nations</a> and <a href="http://www.state.gov/p/io/c71574.htm">US President Barack Obama</a> in September aimed at tackling the global refugee crisis, the spotlight will be firmly on Australia’s record – and how we can do better.</p>
<h2>How did we get here?</h2>
<p>The way Australia conceives of its asylum policies and how they violate our international legal obligations has no parallel elsewhere. <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/seekingsafety/asylum/offshore-processing/briefing/">No other country</a> uses less-developed countries to process refugee claims.</p>
<p>Many countries provide protection to a vastly higher number of refugees than Australia does. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, of the 2.45 million refugees recognised and resettled in 2015, Australia reportedly <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/statistics/unchr2015/">assisted just 11,776</a>. This ranked us 47th in the world relative to GDP. </p>
<p>Yet such facts don’t seem to scratch the veneer of a policy dialogue that considers refugees a threat to national security. Or claims that we are actually turning boats back out of compassion, to save lives. Or that ignores the fundamental principle that a person’s right to seek asylum has nothing to do with how they flee – by land, air or sea.</p>
<p>The writing was on the wall, even before the <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/how_tampa_became_a_turning_point/">Tampa incident in 2001</a>, that Australia was moving away from international best-practice in its treatment of asylum seekers, and to a more isolationist policy agenda. The trajectory of our policy since then has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/julian-burnside-what-sort-of-country-are-we-48162">well-documented</a>.</p>
<p>But with the Nauru files having exposed what goes on in offshore detention centres, will Australians <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-are-raw-evidence-of-torture-can-we-look-away">no longer stand for</a> such a brutal policy? How will we deal with this horrific reality now that we definitively can’t claim ignorance of it?</p>
<h2>Fatigue at fighting the double-think</h2>
<p>The frame of reference for the asylum policy debate is now so skewed that even Australia’s best journalists are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2016/s4518113.htm">unable to ask the fundamental questions</a> of our leaders. These could include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Why is Australia committed to offshore detention? </p></li>
<li><p>Why mandatory detention at all? </p></li>
<li><p>How can the government discriminate against genuine refugees based on how they arrived? </p></li>
<li><p>Why is the government still talking about resettlement to third countries when it is our shared responsibility to protect people fleeing persecution?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>With both major parties pandering to real or imagined fear of voters in the electorate rather than appealing to their humanity and innate decency, there seems to be a lack of interest in the mainstream media in playing the role of fact-checkers or educators. </p>
<p>Australians don’t seem to realise how far off the scale of acceptable state practice we really are, or how barbaric our policies have become. Perhaps until now.</p>
<h2>Not hearing international condemnation</h2>
<p>Since the Howard era, Australia has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-international-condemnation-on-human-rights-mean-so-little-to-australia-53814">largely impervious</a> to the criticism of both the domestic and the international community on its asylum policy. Independent reports are discredited or ignored. </p>
<p>But now, the Turnbull government should take stock of how broad and constant that criticism has been. </p>
<p>The High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in its <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2013/11/52947ac86/unhcr-reports-harsh-conditions-legal-shortcomings-pacific-island-asylum.html">2013 report</a> and several public statements since, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as recently as <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20368&LangID=E">a few days ago</a>, the Human Rights Council through the <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/004/89/PDF/G1600489.pdf?OpenElement">Universal Periodic Review</a> last year, the <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/co/CRC_C_AUS_CO_4.pdf">Committee on the Rights of the Child</a>, and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-29/un-torture-commitee-criticises-australias-asylum-seeker-policy/5927542">Committee against Torture</a> are but a few of the UN bodies that have come down hard on Australia’s asylum policies. </p>
<p>Long before the Nauru Files leak, the UNHCR report said people on Nauru and Manus Island are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… living in arbitrary detention in conditions that do not meet international standards … [the current policies] do not provide a fair and efficient system for assessing refugee claims, do not provide safe and humane conditions of treatment in detention and do not provide for adequate and timely solutions for refugees. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We have now heard the same thing in graphic detail from staff working in the centres. So when is enough enough?</p>
<h2>Why Australia should care</h2>
<p>Much of the media’s concern about how the Nauru Files will play out <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-has-lost-moral-compass-over-immigration-detention-new-zealand-opposition-20160814-gqs493.html">seems focused</a> on the negative reactions of our friends in the UK and New Zealand. But the problem is a little bigger than that.</p>
<p>Australia’s asylum-seeker policy is at odds with this government’s foreign policy goals. One of its <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/international-organisations/pages/australias-candidacy-for-the-unhrc-2018-2020.aspx">key priorities</a> is to secure a seat on the UN Human Rights Council from 2018 to 2020, based on the claim that Australia is an:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… international human rights leader … especially in the context of advancing human rights in the Indo-Pacific region. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no doubt that our asylum-seeker policy, and how we handle the Nauru Files, will have an impact on this objective.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134207/original/image-20160816-13003-1meg8rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s asylum policies will be under scrutiny at the UN in September.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/UN</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response to the global refugee crisis, the largest since the second world war, the rest of the world is busy preparing for two summits to seek better ways to co-operate and share the burden to protect those fleeing conflict and persecution. The summits follow a <a href="https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/secretary-generals-report">report in May 2016</a> by the UN Secretary-General.</p>
<p>The Australian government must consider how it will represent its current position, and what it has to offer, should it choose to participate in the UN summit – where its record will be on display. </p>
<p>In relation to Obama’s summit, the government knows full well from the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/declaration-leaders-summit-peacekeeping">2015 peacekeeping summit</a> that only those countries with firm and genuine new commitments will be invited to participate. In this summit the US is seeking commitments from other governments to increase funding, raise quotas, and support greater self-reliance and inclusion for refugees. </p>
<p>What can Australia offer for a seat at the table? Save The Children Australia CEO Paul Ronalds <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/action/printArticle?id=1011272807">has said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Failure to take meaningful action will confirm Australia’s international ignominy concerning the compassion for people fleeing war and persecution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>History may eventually show the Nauru files to be a crucial turning point for Australia’s asylum-seeker policy and our international standing. But what remains unclear is whether the re-elected but fragile Turnbull government is able break the back of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/resettling-refugees-in-australia-would-not-resume-the-people-smuggling-trade-60253">intractable bipartisan line</a> of “keeping them out”, and how Australians will hold both sides of politics to account for where we go next.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leanne Smith is affiliated with Get Up and a member of the ALP. She is currently on sabbatical from her role as the Chief of the Policy and Best Practice Service of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations.</span></em></p>Reports of abuse on Nauru should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess its asylum-seeker policies before more serious harm is inflicted on Australia’s international standing.Leanne Smith, Visiting Fellow, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638332016-08-14T20:16:18Z2016-08-14T20:16:18ZHow the entire nation of Nauru almost moved to Queensland<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133900/original/image-20160812-13397-jfvznw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nauru's parliament would have been rebuilt in Queensland, but with less power.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANauru-parliament.jpg">CdaMVvWgS/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nauru is best known to most Australians as the remote Pacific island where asylum seekers who arrive by boat are sent. What is less well known is that in the 1960s, the Australian government planned to relocate the entire population of Nauru to an island off the Queensland coast.</p>
<p>The irony of this is striking, especially in light of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">continuing revelations</a> that highlight the non-suitability of Nauru as a host country for refugees. It also provides a cautionary tale for those considering wholesale population relocation as a “solution” for Pacific island communities threatened by the impacts of climate change.</p>
<p>Extensive phosphate mining on Nauru by Australia, Britain and New Zealand during the 20th century <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-rise-of-nauru-can-the-island-bounce-back-from-its-mining-boom-and-bust-62419">devastated much of the country</a>. The landscape was so damaged that scientists considered it would be uninhabitable by the mid-1990s. With the exorbitant cost of rehabilitating the island, relocation was considered the only option.</p>
<p>In 1962, Australia’s prime minister Robert Menzies acknowledged that the three nations had a “clear obligation … to provide a satisfactory future for the Nauruans”, given the large commercial and agricultural benefits they had derived from Nauru’s phosphate. This meant “either finding an island for the Nauruans or receiving them into one of the three countries, or all of the three countries”.</p>
<p>That same year, Australia appointed a Director of Nauruan Resettlement to comb the South Pacific looking for “spare islands offering a fair prospect”. Possible relocation sites in and around Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Australia’s Northern Territory were explored, but were ultimately deemed inappropriate. There weren’t enough job opportunities and there were tensions with the locals.</p>
<p>Fraser Island in Queensland was also considered, but the Australian government decided it didn’t offer sufficiently strong economic prospects to support the population. The Nauruans thought this was a convenient excuse (and archival materials show that the timber industry was fiercely opposed).</p>
<h2>The Curtis solution</h2>
<p>In 1963, Curtis Island near Gladstone was offered as an alternative. Land there was privately held, but the Australian government planned to acquire it and grant the Nauruans the freehold title. Pastoral, agricultural, fishing and commercial activities were to be established, and all the costs of resettlement, including housing and infrastructure, were to be met by the partner governments at an estimated cost of 10 million pounds – around A$274 million in today’s terms.</p>
<p>But the Nauruans refused to go. They did not want to be assimilated into <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/08abolition">White Australia</a> and lose their distinctive identity as a people. Many also saw resettlement as a quick-fix solution by the governments that had devastated their homeland, and a cheap option compared with full rehabilitation of the island.</p>
<p>Australia also refused to relinquish sovereignty over Curtis Island. While the Nauruans could become Australian citizens, and would have the right to “manage their own local administration” through a council “with wide powers of local government”, the island would officially remain part of Australia. </p>
<p>Frustrated by what it perceived as a genuine and generous attempt to meet the wishes of the Nauruan people, the Menzies government insisted it wouldn’t change its mind.</p>
<p>So the Nauruans stayed put.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133902/original/image-20160812-18023-n145mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nauru’s phosphate industry has left the landscape scarred and useless for agriculture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CdaMVvWgS/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The issue briefly resurfaced in 2003 when Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer once again suggested wholesale relocation as a possible strategy, given that Nauru was “bankrupt and widely regarded as having no viable future”. Nauru’s president dismissed the proposal, reiterating that relocating the population to Australia would undermine the country’s identity and culture.</p>
<h2>Planned relocations in the Pacific</h2>
<p>Today, “planned relocation” is touted as a possible solution for low-lying Pacific island countries, such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, which are threatened by sea-level rise and other long-term climate impacts. </p>
<p>But past experiences in the Pacific, such as the <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/caught-between-homelands">relocation of the Banabans</a> in 1945 from present-day Kiribati to Fiji, show the potentially deep, intergenerational psychological consequences of planned relocation. This is why most Pacific islanders see it as an option of last resort. Unless relocation plans result from a respectful, considered and consultative process, in which different options and views are seriously considered, they will always be highly fraught.</p>
<p>Nauru today is at the highest level of vulnerability on the <a href="http://gsd.spc.int/environmental-vulnerability-index">Environmental Vulnerability Index</a>. The past destruction wrought by phosphate mining has rendered the island incapable of supporting any local agriculture or industry, with 90% of the land covered by limestone pinnacles.</p>
<p>It has a very high unemployment rate, scarce labour opportunities, and virtually no private sector – hence why the millions of dollars on offer to operate Australia’s offshore processing centres was so attractive. These factors also illustrate why the permanent resettlement of refugees on Nauru is unrealistic and unsustainable.</p>
<p>Nauru’s future seems sadly rooted in an unhealthy relationship of co-dependency with Australia, as its territory is once again exploited, at the expense of the vulnerable. And as the story of Curtis Island shows, there are no simple solutions, whether well-intentioned or not.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an overview of a longer article published in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2016.1202376">Australian Geographer</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Research Council of Norway. She is engaged in several international policy processes aimed at developing strategies to address human mobility in the context of climate change and disasters.</span></em></p>In the 1960s, with the phosphate boom over and Nauru’s economy in ruins, Australia offered to move the entire nation to Queensland’s Curtis Island. But with no sovereignty on offer, the deal collapsed.Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639202016-08-14T10:01:04Z2016-08-14T10:01:04ZIf Abbott hadn’t been hyper-partisan on Malaysia people swap, Turnbull mightn’t have a Nauru problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134028/original/image-20160814-25477-vizzg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott initially aspired as prime minister not to get sucked into the 24-hour media round, but he quickly did.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Jason Edwards</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend that Malcolm Turnbull had visited only seven electorates since the July 2 poll, and contrasted his “hermit-style approach” with Bill Shorten’s “never-ending election campaign”. The story was headed: “Where’s Mally? PM is MIA”. </p>
<p>Shorten, who has re-started his “town-hall”-style meetings was quoted as advising Turnbull to get out of his “big office” and go and meet ordinary people.</p>
<p>Let’s just think this through. It’s been a month and a half since the election. The next one is nearly three years away if it is on schedule. Should the prime minister spend the first days of a new term running around seeing voters, like he did in the eight weeks before the election, or should he have feet under desk in that “big office”, getting his head into issues, and doing some planning?</p>
<p>Heaven knows the government seems more adrift than is good for it or the country. Pseudo-electioneering ought not be the first priority.</p>
<p>Of course a prime minister should move around the country to keep in touch – and not just when an election looms. But it is a matter of balance between “retail” and “wholesale” politics.</p>
<p>Retail is the selling, the media round, the fluro-jacket appearances. Wholesale is the preparing and putting in place of the policies. Retailing must be done throughout a term but should intensify later on. The more work done early on the wholesale phase the better the outcome, and the easier the retailing.</p>
<p>Even if a prime minister is five times as clever and efficient as the rest of us, he or she is going to find the “wholesale” work harder if constantly on the move. </p>
<p>The balance for an opposition leader is different. Being out and about, ever visible, has become core business from the start of the term – although, with the public so heartily sick of politics and politicians, I suspect it can be overdone.</p>
<p>One can expect Turnbull’s advisers will fret somewhat about the “hermit” description. They’ll worry whether he should be in the public domain more – even if the objective answer is no, he shouldn’t be, the political one can be different. The modern media demand visibility and leaders flout that insistence at their peril.</p>
<p>In general terms, today’s phenomenon of what is dubbed “the permanent campaign” benefits opposition leaders, not leaders in office. But the latter find it hard, indeed nearly impossible, to break the cycle.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott initially aspired as prime minister not to get sucked into the 24-hour media round, but he quickly did. And, it turned out, the fluro jacket was the uniform in which he felt most comfortable.</p>
<p>Abbott in a speech on Friday to the Samuel Griffith Society once again reflected back on his leadership, and in doing so offered a breathtaking (sort of) mea culpa from opposition days. He said he wondered whether the Coalition should have taken a different attitude towards the Gillard government’s attempted “people swap” with Malaysia.</p>
<p>That plan was designed to deter asylum seekers getting on boats. It was struck down by the High Court; the government could not then get legislation through parliament to validate it. Abbott and his immigration spokesman Scott Morrison dripped concern – that was hypocritical at the time let alone in retrospect – about the human rights situation in Malaysia, where the boat people would be sent.</p>
<p>Abbott says he doubts the policy would have worked. “Still, letting it stand would have been an acknowledgement of the government-of-the-day’s mandate to do the best it could, by its own lights, to meet our nation’s challenges. It would have been a step back from the hyper-partisanship that now poisons our public life,” he told his audience.</p>
<p>This is an extraordinary case of second thoughts. The people swap might not have been successful but it was worth a go. If it had succeeded, the Coalition government would not have its present intractable problems on Nauru and Manus Island; it would not be facing a likely parliamentary inquiry about what’s happened on its watch on Nauru.</p>
<p>When he was in office Abbott apologised to the Malaysian prime minister for having caught that country up in Australian domestic politics. “I offered an act of contrition,” he said at the time. Now he is saying the Coalition’s whole stance was wrong.</p>
<p>Abbott’s political modus operandi has been marked on occasion by acting and then seeking absolution retrospectively. But this issue was too big, and the Coalition’s obstruction too significant, for any political absolution to be granted. He, Morrison and the opposition generally behaved cynically and irresponsibly.</p>
<p>Apart from its immediate policy implications, their move helped degrade the political system and set a marker for oppositions to follow.</p>
<p>Precisely how far Labor will take Abbott’s “hyper-partisan” style of opposition is yet to be seen. Labor’s new finance spokesman Jim Chalmers, in a recent interview with Guardian Australia, said the major parties needed “to find a way to be more open minded and constructive … because that’s what people expect”.</p>
<p>“I think the public expect more bipartisanship,” he said.</p>
<p>The first tests will come soon. On Wednesday Turnbull in a major economic speech to CEDA will highlight the budget repair challenge, the rating agencies’ warnings, the need to tackle spending, and the onus that puts on parliament – on the opposition and crossbenchers.</p>
<p>Shorten knows Turnbull is on the defensive on many fronts; Shorten also has to keep his momentum going strongly to guarantee his own leadership position in the longer term. The imperative of budget repair is very pressing, but the Abbott model of opposition – stir up a heap of trouble and keep any regrets for later – is very tempting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend that Malcolm Turnbull had visited only seven electorates since the July 2 poll, and contrasted his “hermit-style approach” with Bill Shorten’s “never-ending…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638262016-08-12T03:59:38Z2016-08-12T03:59:38ZNauru abuse reports should mark an opportunity for compassion, not more dehumanisation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133871/original/image-20160811-18014-1w5w931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Peter Dutton suggested asylum seekers in detention on Nauru have self-harmed in order to get to Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since The Guardian Australia <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">released more than 2,000 leaked reports</a> of abuse in the Nauru detention centre, there have been calls to do something – from a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-12/nauru-child-abuse-claims-calls-for-inclusion-in-royal-commission/7722414">royal commission</a> to public protests. </p>
<p>But what we need most <a href="https://theconversation.com/nauru-abuse-reports-warrant-urgent-action-to-protect-children-in-offshore-detention-63756">is a call</a> for immediate change to government policy. This call can only come from the Australian people. </p>
<p>The problem is, Australians have been so convinced by the strategic dehumanisation of asylum seekers the government and the media have undertaken over the past 15 years that, according to polls conducted during the 2016 federal election, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-09/election-2016-vote-compass-asylum-seekers-immmigration/7493064">42% of voters</a> agree with the continued offshore processing of asylum seekers.</p>
<p>Words and phrases such as “<a href="http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/26956/A17.pdf">illegal maritime arrivals</a>”, “boat people”, “terrorists”, “detainees”, “people smugglers” and “illegals” have filled discussions about people who attempt to seek asylum in Australia.</p>
<p>This language has enabled their dehumanisation to a point where almost half of the Australian population supported spending <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/4129606/upload_binary/4129606.pdf;fileType=application/pdf">more than A$1 billion</a> in a year to lock up roughly 1,500 people who committed no crime.</p>
<h2>Political response suggests no change</h2>
<p>The response of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/asylum-seekers-have-selfimmolated-to-get-to-australia-peter-dutton-20160811-gqq48f.html">Immigration Minister Peter Dutton</a> to the release of the Nauru abuse reports exemplifies the continued attempts to dehumanise asylum seekers. </p>
<p>Dutton suggested those held in detention in Nauru have:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… gone to the extent of self-harming, and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By turning the blame back on those who are detained, describing them as willing to set themselves on fire in an attempt to get to Australia, Dutton is again positioning asylum seekers in a way that makes them unrelatable to Australians. </p>
<p>Rather than acknowledging the self-immolation and self-harm as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/self-immolation-incidents-on-nauru-are-acts-of-hopeful-despair-58791">symptom of the desperation and hopelessness</a> and a result of the significant mental trauma that has been inflicted on those held in detention, Dutton once again managed to dehumanise those held on Nauru in an attempt to ameliorate the compassion that is leading to the demand for changes to offshore processing.</p>
<p>Nauru is home to one of Australia’s offshore processing centres. People who have risked everything to attempt to travel to Australia to seek asylum from war or political and other forms of persecution are locked up and warehoused in indefinite detention with no hope for resettlement in Australia, and little hope for the future. </p>
<p>This is despite <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/4129606/upload_binary/4129606.pdf;fileType=application/pdf">approximately 77%</a> of those whose asylum claims have been processed having been recognised as legitimate refugees. </p>
<p>For many years, research has repeatedly demonstrated the <a href="http://tps.sagepub.com/content/44/3/359.short">long-term impacts of detention</a> on people seeking asylum. There is compelling evidence from across the world that demonstrates the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16255740">detrimental impact of detention</a> on the mental and physical health of children and adults. </p>
<p>But despite the documented impact of detention, it continues as Australia’s policy and practice toward asylum seekers.</p>
<h2>Lifting the veil of secrecy</h2>
<p>Perhaps one of the most concerning aspects of Australia’s offshore processing facilities is the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642987.2016.1196903">secrecy</a> that surrounds them. </p>
<p>Journalists are virtually forbidden entry to Nauru; media visas cost <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/nauru-visa-to-cost-8000">A$8,000 per application</a>.</p>
<p>The Australian Border Force Act enables the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2015/October/Border_Force_Act">prosecution and possible imprisonment</a> of any offshore detention staff member who speaks out about conditions in the centres on Nauru and Manus Island. This is one of the reasons why the Nauru abuse reports’ release has caused such a stir.</p>
<p>This leak has suddenly given Australians access to reports, notes and documents that illustrate the extent of the abuses the Australian government is enabling and perpetuating. </p>
<p>As a country, as taxpaying citizens, are we OK with a system that has resulted in seven reports of sexual assault of children, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive">59 reports of assault on children</a>, 30 incidences of self-harm involving children, and 159 reports of threatened self-harm involving children – all in 26 months?</p>
<p>The reports provide hard evidence of something Australia and the world has known about for a long time. But they also provide startling proof of the scale and staggering incidence rates of the self-harm, assault and abuse that is being experienced.</p>
<p>The data is there, the evidence is there, and the outcomes have been proven with decades of research. Can the Australian people read of young detainees who sew the shape of a heart into their own hand using a needle and thread, or <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive">grab bottles of cleaning fluid</a> in their classrooms and desperately drink it and not be affected?</p>
<p>What the reports may enable, through the detailing of the documented horrendous experiences of asylum seekers, is compassion from the Australian public. And through compassion it may be possible to overcome the decades of considered dehumanisation that have enabled the detention regime to continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Baak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The response of Peter Dutton to the release of the Nauru abuse reports exemplifies a continued attempt to dehumanise asylum seekers.Melanie Baak, Convener, Refugee and Migration Research Network, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637562016-08-10T05:11:02Z2016-08-10T05:11:02ZNauru abuse reports warrant urgent action to protect children in offshore detention<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133618/original/image-20160810-18037-eqzsv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What are Australia’s international obligations in relation to its offshore processing centres?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Guardian Australia has released more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">2,000 leaked incident reports</a> from Australia’s offshore processing centre on Nauru. These reports cover the period from May 2013 to October 2015. They document numerous incidents of child sexual abuse, assault and attempted self-harm.</p>
<p>These reports are the latest in a series of leaks that have shattered the veil of secrecy surrounding Australia’s offshore processing regime. They affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.</p>
<p>With every major leak over the past few years, the same questions inevitably arise. If these incidents were reported, why were they not acted upon? What are Australia’s international obligations in relation to the offshore processing centres? And what should be done now?</p>
<h2>An inadequate framework to protect children</h2>
<p>In the period covered by the incident reports, the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/publications/forgotten-children-national-inquiry-children">Australian Human Rights Commission</a>, a <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Regional_processing_Nauru/Regional_processing_Nauru/Final_Report">Senate inquiry</a>, <a href="https://ama.com.au/ausmed/nauru-detention-unsafe-children-senate-inquiry">doctors</a> and the government’s own <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2014/may/29/nauru-family-health-risks-report-in-full">physical and mental health subcommittee</a> expressly warned the Australian government of the risk of self-harm and abuse of children in offshore processing centres. </p>
<p>Experts have firmly recommended all children be removed from offshore detention. These calls have been ignored.</p>
<p>Several private companies are contracted to operate and provide services at the offshore processing centres in Nauru and on Manus Island. But the Australian Immigration Department maintains a tight hold over the operation of its offshore processing regime, and contractors who ran the Nauru centre in the period covered by the leaked reports had no power to remove children from detention. </p>
<p>Even since the centre <a href="https://theconversation.com/detainees-on-nauru-may-have-been-released-but-they-are-not-free-48648">became “open”</a> in October 2015, there has been very little contractors can do to protect the vulnerable people in their care from harm. In normal circumstances, the immediate priority in cases of child abuse is to remove children from their unsafe environment. </p>
<p>Given the lack of effective child protection services on Nauru, this would most likely require children be removed from the island altogether and provided with a safe and supportive environment in Australia. </p>
<p>The Australian government is resisting such an outcome. It holds firm to its policy that anyone who arrives by boat <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/about/operation-sovereign-borders/counter-people-smuggling-communication/english/in-australia">will never be resettled in Australia</a>. The possibility of children and other vulnerable people being accommodated in Australia until an alternative long-term solution can be found has never been considered.</p>
<p>In addition to removing children to safe environments, action needs to be taken to hold the perpetrators of abuse to account – whether they are Australian contractors, Nauruan citizens, or anyone else.</p>
<p>However, Nauru lacks adequate <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-children-from-abuse-in-detention-requires-more-than-mandatory-reporting-49048">legal and policy frameworks</a> to deal with child protection. There is no child protection agency or legislation in Nauru. </p>
<p>And the Nauruan police force does not have the capacity, experience or resources to prosecute incidents of child abuse. Of the 50 cases referred to the Nauruan police over the last three years, only <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4251724.htm">five charges have been laid</a>. Only two convictions have been recorded. Refugees on Nauru say this track record has discouraged many from reporting their abuse. </p>
<p>Ferrovial, the Spanish company that operates the processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island after buying 90% of Broadspectrum, this week signalled its intention not to bid for a new contract to continue operating the centres after February 2017.</p>
<p>International lawyers have warned Ferrovial that its employees could be held liable for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/25/ferrovial-staff-risk-prosecution-for-managing-australian-detention-camps">crimes against humanity</a>. Its intention not to renew its contract may signal it does not believe it can meet its contractual obligations in a manner consistent with its human rights obligations. </p>
<p>Ferrovial will remain entangled in Australia’s offshore processing regime longer than it had hoped, however. The Immigration Department has <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/ferrovial-forced-fo-run-nauru-manus-detention-centres-until-late-2017-20160805-gqlr2i">exercised its right</a> to extend Ferrovial’s contracts unilaterally, meaning it will have to remain in place until October 2017.</p>
<h2>Secrecy provisions need to be revisited</h2>
<p>The leaked incident reports also highlight yet again the need for transparency in Australia’s refugee policy. </p>
<p>The Guardian has published these reports because it believes Australians have the right to know more about the regime. The lack of access to Nauru and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-could-a-whistleblower-go-public-without-fear-of-prosecution-under-the-border-force-act-44467">secrecy provisions</a> of the Australian Border Force Act have impeded public access to such information.</p>
<p>The reports also put enormous pressure on people working with asylum seekers and refugees offshore, who could face prison for sharing what they know about Australia’s policies with the public.</p>
<p>A new <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/doctors-launch-high-court-challenge-against-border-force-gag-laws-20160726-gqdre2.html">High Court challenge</a> will consider whether the Australian Border Force secrecy provisions infringe the implied right to freedom of political communication in the Constitution. This case could have important ramifications and may limit the government’s ability to silence whistleblowers who wish to raise matters of public interest. </p>
<p>As these files and the recent revelations about Northern Territory’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/26/abu-ghraib-images-children-detention-australia-public-inquiry">Don Dale detention centre</a> highlight, access to information is crucial to holding people in power to account for their actions. </p>
<h2>What are Australia’s international obligations?</h2>
<p>As with each previous revelation of abuse offshore, these leaked files raise the crucial question of <a href="http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/offshore-processing-australia%E2%80%99s-responsibility-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-nauru-and">who is responsible</a> for the asylum seekers and refugees in detention. </p>
<p>Successive Australian governments have avoided engaging with this question at all costs. Instead, they have dismissed everything that happens offshore as matters for Nauru and PNG alone. But the truth is Australia and each offshore processing country have duties to protect people from harm and ensure there is an appropriate response to all reported cases of abuse. </p>
<p>Australia’s obligations arise from its contracts with the companies it has recruited to operate the centres, its agreements with each offshore processing country, Australian law and international law. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, offshore processing is an entirely Australian creation, and the only country deciding where to hold people is Australia. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/glimmers-of-hope-for-detained-asylum-seekers-in-the-high-courts-nauru-decision-54036">lines of responsibility are clear</a>.</p>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>The Australian government showed leadership in responding so swiftly to the reports of child abuse arising at Don Dale by announcing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/don-dale-royal-commission">royal commission</a> to investigate the matter.</p>
<p>The damning evidence presented in these files, together with all the other evidence of harm already on the public record, is more than sufficient to warrant serious and immediate intervention. </p>
<p>It is incumbent on the government to show similar leadership and act in an equally swift manner in response to these latest revelations. A royal commission would be an appropriate first step.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Khanh Hoang is a co-chair of the Refugee Rights Subcommittee of the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline Gleeson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leaked incident reports from the Nauru detention centre affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.Khanh Hoang, Associate Lecturer, ANU College of Law – Migration Law Program, Australian National UniversityMadeline Gleeson, Research Associate, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.