"We have a pandemic of suicidal thoughts in Afghanistan. The situation is the worst ever, and the world rarely thinks or talks about it," says psychologist Dr Amal.
"When you read the news, you read about the hunger crisis, but no-one talks about mental health. It's like people are being slowly poisoned. Day by day, they're losing hope."
Afghan women in mental health crisis over bleak future. By Yogita Limaye, BBC World News
Australian mothers and children held in a Syrian detention camp will take the Australian government to court in an attempt to compel the government to bring them home. The group members are all Australian citizens and argue they have a legal right to return to Australia.
People who force migrants into breaching their visa conditions could face jail time and businesses that exploit migrants would be barred from tapping more overseas workers under plans to overhaul the temporary visa system.
Jail terms and tougher policing to protect exploited migrants. By Shane Wright, The Age
Australian employers who exploit migrant workers will be banned from hiring other visa holders and will face new criminal penalties, as part of a government crackdown.
The Human Rights Law Centre welcomed the announcement as “a critical shift in the right direction”.
Refugee advocates are concerned about the slow implementation of a deal between Australia and New Zealand to resettle people detained by Canberra on Nauru for trying to enter Australia illegally by boat.
Refugee advocates concerned for Nauru refugees (Audio) Radio New Zealand
Samira Yama was sweating under a blue burqa as she stood in the long queue to cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan. It was October 2021, and for the first time in her life the 28-year-old Afghan fashion designer and feminist had been forced to cover her face and body.
Thirty-one of the 150 people meant to be resettled by 30 June have arrived so far, INZ has confirmed to RNZ. "The first year ends in July [June 30th], we won't have the 150 because we have just started the work. But we will have 450 in the three-year period," the head of INZ Alison McDonald said.
Refugees who were on Manus Island and are now in Australia can be resettled under the AUS/NZ Agreement. But the 84 who are still in PNG are not included in the AUS/NZ arrangement, INZ said.
"It's been pretty traumatic for those individuals to be stuck there and now told that Australia has washed their hands of them," Graham Thom said.
It has been 25 years since Gay Htoo Paw fled his home in Myanmar but he now calls Australia the land of opportunity for education and work, one that is free of conflict.
The 54-year-old was the first Myanmar refugee to move to Albany 13 years ago on Western Australia's south coast, where more than 170 of his people now call home.
The Albanese government is scrapping a crucial visa program for Afghans who worked for Australia, including interpreters who supported Australian soldiers.
But a military lawyer helping Afghans escape the country insists he's now "quietly confident" for his clients, after the government allowed hundreds who had previously been rejected to reapply in the interim.
Harrowing accounts emerge from refugees who cross the border to escape fierce fighting in Sudan's West Darfur region.
The testimonies are hard to independently verify due to the blackout, but they are similar to those of refugees in other camps who described the indiscriminate killing of civilians, the ransacking of hospitals and the burning of entire neighbourhoods in different parts of Darfur.
Since international borders re-opened, asylum applications at the primary stage steadily grew from a low of around 618 in February 2022 to 1,786 in March 2023. While this was well below the peak in 2017-18 of around 2,500 per month, it would have been worrying the Albanese Government given the entry of the Coalition and Murdoch press into the public debate on asylum numbers.
Have we turned a corner on growth in asylum applications? By Abul Rizvi, Pearls and Irritations
The NZ government has scotched suggestions a deal bringing refugees from Australia to New Zealand is part of a tradeoff for policy changes on citizenship and 501 deportees.
RNZ revealed this week that most of the 450 refugees in a three-year agreement on former detention centre occupants are already living in Australia.
About 30 refugees are due to arrive next month.
Undeterred by the scale of challenges in her in-tray, the new head of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan, says ‘We need to be standing with those people’
“I think it’s most important that Australia actually is not scared to hold China to account and we expect to see Australia being a really important leader at, for example, the UN human rights council and within the multilateral fora, where these issues are being discussed,” she says.
But for Australia to improve its credibility to speak up on the world stage, it has also been urged to address its own deficiencies.
A musician living in Wal Wal, population 27, in the Wimmera, Victoria is offering hope to a displaced family of six from Afghanistan.
The numbers are these: Australia will spend $485 million this year running its prison camp on Nauru. It will do this to maroon 22 refugees, about half as many people as there are seats on a school bus. Divided, it costs $22 million per person, per year to continue this gruesome charade.
It is not hard to imagine how many people could be helped with this same money, how many thousands of refugees could be shown compassion. Instead Australia has chosen the ugly expensiveness of torture.
Department of Home Affairs officials revealed the new figures at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday evening, but disputed suggestions from the Greens this amounted to a cost of $22m a person.
Officials expect that in the next year no refugees and asylum seekers will remain on Nauru, but maintaining facilities for offshore processing will continue to cost at least $350m a year as a “contingency” to send people in the event of future boat arrivals.
One inmate became the voice of the men locked up on Manus. Behrouz Boochani and Ben Doherty look back at the risks he took to get this story to the world.
Click on link below to access Grandmothers for Refugees NSW archived website.
It was March 2016 and Paul Farrell, then a reporter at Guardian Australia, had agreed to meet an anonymous source.
He had been reporting on immigration for several years but still, when he was slipped a USB stick across the table and told, “I think it might be of interest to you,” he had no idea what to expect.
“I booted it up and what flashed on to the screen was most comprehensive archive I’d ever seen of what was happening at the Nauru [immigration detention] facility at the time,” he says.
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